Stability
by Ophiomancer
Summary: Gaara had a poor idea of what love was, but he was pretty sure that it didn't normally work like this. Of course, Team Seven could always be relied upon to confound expectation. Gaara/Naruto/Sakura/Sasuke , Heed the warnings in the Author's Notes.
1. Audacity

**Author's Notes**: This story veers off into the realm of AU some time after the Rescuing the Kazekage story arc, and starts about eighteen months after it. Gaara has Shukaku back, among other things. I follow the manga as it is scanlated, so future chapters of this story may reflect the progress of canon. Just keep in mind that I'll be picking and choosing what I use from canon, and that this story may very well be riddled with spoilers for those who do not follow the fan-translated releases on the manga. Or it may not. I haven't decided yet.

The warnings and pairings are a forecast for the entire story. You may have to wait awhile for some of this fun stuff.

**Warnings:** Spoilers, Polyamory, Gender Bending, Not-Quite-MPreg, Homosexual Relationships, Heterosexual Relationships, Obscene Language, Sexual Content, Violence, and Moral Ambiguity.

**Pairings:** (arranged alphabetically, not by top/bottom) Starts off Gaara/Naruto, and winds up Gaara/Naruto/Sakura/Sasuke. That's one big polyamorous mess, not a love quadrangle, just so you all realize. Sexual roles are very fluid in this story, so if you're devoted to the idea of strict, permanent roles inside the bedroom, this may not be the most comfortable story for you.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto. This being a fanfiction site, that's a bit of a no-brainer.

**Chapter I: Audacity**

Naruto trotted up to the gates of Suna with a sunny expression. Despite three solid days of traveling through brutal desert, he was in a good mood. He was on vacation, and he was determined to enjoy it. Even if it _was_ on the Hokage's orders. _Trying to locate Sasuke has you on edge_, she'd said. _The villagers are afraid that you're going to go _over_ the edge, and I'm beginning to agree with them. So I'm giving you two weeks of paid leave. Do whatever you want, as long as you get the fuck out of Konoha. It'll be a vacation for the rest of us, too._

It was insulting, but he wasn't going to complain (much) about _paid_ vacation. Really, Tsunade had been uncharacteristically generous.

There weren't very many places that would welcome him with open arms, and fewer still that would act as a deterrent to the remains of the Akatsuki. Suna was one of them, and had the added advantage of being home to a friend that he hadn't properly seen in _ages_.

Maybe during his visit, he'd even get Gaara to smile, for once. After having Shukaku shoved back into him on short notice, he could probably do with something to smile about.

Naruto whistled with more enthusiasm than skill as he strode through the village. Pedestrian traffic was lethargic under the hammer of the burning afternoon sun. The few people outside in the torturous heat directed stares at him that ranged from skeptical to downright hostile. Maybe everyone in Suna had their sense of humor removed at birth. That would explain a lot about Gaara.

As though thoughts of his brother had conjured him, Naruto caught a glimpse of Kankuro as he ducked into the shade of a small store across the street.

"Hey! Cat-Face!". Kankuro popped back out from under the green and yellow awning with a comical, 'Who, me?' expression, then grimaced as he spotted the excited orange blur bearing down on him.

"Hey, how are you doing, I haven't seen you in _ages_. I'm here on vacation. Is Temari here, too? Are you busy?", Naruto blathered without Kankuro hearing a word of it. He was too busy wrinkling his nose at both the smell and color of Naruto's outfit. People who didn't live in the desert tended to sweat a lot more than the people who _did_ live there when they came to visit, and Naruto had to have spent at least three days in those clothes. Plus, they were orange. _Orange_. What self-respecting ninja wore orange? His thoughts on the subject were cut short as he noticed Naruto looking at him with an anticipatory expression which suggested that he'd just asked a question, and was waiting for it to be answered.

"Sorry, what?", Kankuro asked.

"I said, would it be OK for me to visit Gaara now?", Naruto repeated. He didn't look at all put off that Kankuro hadn't heard him the first time. He was used to people blocking out half of what he said, and he knew that he had a tendency to chatter. If he really wanted someone to hear him the first time, he would just be extra _loud_. He was good at that.

Kankuro ran a dubious eye over Naruto's sandy, smelly travel garb. Well, Gaara wouldn't care. He'd probably want to see Naruto as soon as possible, and he needed to lay off the paper work any way. He'd started to do his subordinates' out of the sheer boredom that running a ninja village in peace time could induce. Said he wanted to feel _useful_. Feh. Like dying once for his village didn't put him down permanently in the history books as _useful_, at the very least.

"Yeah, sure. I'll walk you.", Kankuro said graciously. The ANBU would probably kick Naruto to the curb if he went in alone, looking like something a sandcat dragged in.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Naruto found Gaara in his office, slaving over a truly prodigious mountain of paperwork. He wished that he could take a picture of the scene back to Konoha with him, to show that old hag of a Hokage that she_ really_ didn't have anything to whine about.

"Naruto.", Gaara didn't look surprised to see him, but he did look a bit pleased. Naruto thought so, at least. It was hard to tell.

"Gaara! I'm on vacation, so I thought I'd drop by.", Naruto said, as though Suna was just a pleasant stroll from his own front door. Meanwhile, Kankuro waved sluggishly at his brother before showing himself out. He had to get away from that rancid, orange infraction against any sane ninja's common sense. Naruto didn't even notice him leaving, and Gaara was too focused on Naruto to acknowledge the gesture. But that was fine, because Gaara looked happier than Kankuro had seen him in months.

"Ah.", Gaara said, pithy as ever. Naruto gave the mound of paperwork a measuring look. He wasn't sure how much effort it would take to drag Gaara away from it. Unlike Tsunade, he took all aspects of his title seriously. Maybe a little bit too seriously, if Naruto was any judge. The rings around Gaara's eyes looked even larger and blacker than usual, and stood out painfully against his pale skin. For someone who lived in the desert, Gaara apparently didn't get much sun. And no wonder, if he had to tackle a pile of paperwork that huge on a daily basis. Still, Naruto had the uncomfortable feeling that Gaara's troubled appearance had as much to do with a belligerent Tanuki demon as it had to do with too many overtime hours. He didn't even know if Gaara was able to sleep these days.

"Gaara, you're going to wither away in this office if you don't go outside once in awhile. I know, You should give me a tour of your village! It'll be great!", Naruto said. Gaara didn't look convinced that it would, in fact, be _great_. But he did stand up and sling the gourd, which had been hitherto resting against his gigantic slab of a desk, up onto his back.

"Maybe.", He said.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Gaara's idea of _maybe_ giving Naruto a tour consisted of walking through the village without pause, and out into the desert. He motioned to the indignant looking ANBU behind him to stay behind. They did so, with great reluctance. What if all that _orange_ was contagious? Peer pressure was a great and terrible force, after all. They would have felt better if they'd been there to guard their Kazekage from it.

"You know, I was just out here. I can say with some authority that it's really hot, and really boring.", Naruto whined, his tone playfully exasperated.

"It's peaceful."

"Yeah, because all that paperwork was _so_ exciting.", Naruto groused. Nonetheless, he followed Gaara out over the dunes, until the red stone cliffs and eccentrically organic architecture of Hidden Sand were blocked from view. Gaara turned out to be leading him to a small valley strewn with scrubby vegetation, and large, flat rocks that looked good for sitting on. The shadow of the nearest dune kept the area just barely out of the direct rays of the harsh desert sun. It was a little bit less boring than the featureless mounds of sand that they had just trekked through, but not by much.

Gaara planted himself without ceremony on a particularly bench-like slab of granite, and Naruto sat down beside him. He tried to imitate his friend's Zen-like calm and seemingly endless fascination with the desert with less success.

"Gaaaara, this is boring. I thought for sure that you would take me out for ramen or something."

"Ramen is not popular in the desert. It contains too much water."

"You would think that being watery would make it _more _popular.", Naruto pointed out.

"It would be wasteful.", Gaara corrected him. Naruto sputtered in outrage over the idea that ramen could _ever_ be considered a waste. Still, he hadn't come all the way from Konoha to argue. He had come to make new, more pleasant memories with his friend than most of the ones that he currently had of their time together. Many of which included either Gaara being dead, or making other people dead. Naruto wanted to 'strengthen their bond' as Sai would probably put it. But Naruto thought, rightfully, that Sai was a freak, so he settled for thinking of it as 'hanging out'.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I guess you'll have to take me for curry instead. It's more expensive, but you make more money than I do any way.", Naruto understated. One corner of Gaara's lip quirked into what had the potential to become a smile, before smoothing back into a placid line.

"All right.", He agreed. Naruto grinned at him for a moment, and then pinned him with a serious stare.

"You know, we haven't really had a chance to talk since all that shit with Akatsuki went down, and you got your demon back. Not that we've_ ever_ really had a chance to talk. But, I just wanted to see how you were doing, and to say that you can talk to me about anything, if you want. I'll understand.", Naruto smiled brightly in conclusion, and just barely stopped himself from copying Gai's infamous Nice Guy pose. He'd practiced that speech for three days, and was proud that it had all come out correctly. Now if only Gaara didn't kill him for his presumption.

A lonesome locust chirred from inside one of the scrubby shrubs somewhere to Naruto's left. The air bent and blurred above the distant, reflective dunes. At last, Gaara blinked.

"Anything?", Gaara asked.

"Of course! Anything you want.", Naruto said happily, pleased to not have become a red smear on the pristine sand.

Gaara mulled it over for seconds that dragged into an eternity, while Naruto fidgeted. Getting Gaara involved in a conversation was like pulling alligator teeth, only not as exciting.

"What do you think about sex?", Gaara finally asked. There was barely enough inflection in his voice to make it a question.

That... wasn't quite what Naruto had expected. He'd anticipated something closer to, 'Does your demon talk to you?', or 'How do you cope with the frenzies of uncontrollable bloodlust'. Something of that nature. Gaara had wandered so far off on a tangent that it would take Naruto some time to catch up.

"Uh, well. That's... What about it exactly?", He finished weakly. There was probably a perfectly normal question buried in this topic, somewhere. Something about demons. Normal. Right.

"Would you have sex with me?", Gaara asked. He didn't look particularly excited by the idea, or interested in the answer.

Naruto stared, bug-eyed and slack-jawed, at his friend. One arm was raised, accusatory finger pointed at the source of his shock. It wasn't a flattering expression. Gaara might have even gone so far as to call it stupid, except that he was trying very hard exercise his stunted sense of tact.

Naruto could have argued that the stone-faced bastard's tact had aborted itself in his mother's womb, because _tactful_ was the definitive opposite of what Gaara's proposition had been.

Naruto took a moment to let the word 'proposition' roll around in his head, like a marble on the deck of a seafaring ship. He tried to wrap his mind around the concept that he'd just been propositioned by one of his best friends. A friend who was not only male, and didn't even live in Naruto's village, but also a person that he had always assumed, insomuch as he thought of such things (which was almost never), to be completely asexual. Every effort he made to get a grip on the boggling idea was foiled as something in his stomach seemed to lurch sideways, and a wave of dismay washed over him. He wasn't used to this kind of situation. It was the first offer of physical intimacy that he'd received from a person who wasn't in the business of providing it. He felt justifiably annoyed that life had been unfair enough to once again run roughshod all over his hopes and dreams.

Not that Naruto's hopes and dreams were all that clear to him. He'd had vague thoughts that maybe Sakura would finally view him as more than a friend. After all, he'd already made the leap up in her estimation from worthless pest to treasured friend, so surely he had a chance. Or maybe he would find out if she'd been right about Hinata having a crush on him. That could be worth exploring. Hell, much as he didn't like to admit it, he'd even caught himself picturing violent make-up sex with Sasuke, after Naruto dragged his ass back to the village. Which he totally would. And he'd top, too.

The point was, Naruto had at some point or other considered nearly half of the people in his peer group as a sexual partners, if only because his teenage hormones acted like some insidious genjutsu, often at the most inconvenient times. But he had never once looked at Gaara in that light. The image wasn't so much appalling as it was simply unthinkable.

Did Gaara really even like him in that way? Naruto knew that Gaara respected him, felt he owed him, and shared a deep bond of friendship and mutual understanding with him, but that wasn't the same as physical attraction. Gaara hadn't exhibited any noticeable warmth or even interest since the verbal bomb had been dropped. What could possibly be going on in his convoluted brain?

Naruto latched on to the sudden hope that Gaara's lackluster social skills had just led him to misinterpret somehow. He didn't bother to entertain the thought that Gaara might have been joking. After all, the guy was still work on a sense of _humanity_. A sense of humor was expecting too much.

"Do you mean, if I were gay, or if we were all alone on a desert island, or that sort of-", he was cut off before that hope had much chance to grow.

"I didn't mean it as a hypothetical question. I chose a turn of phrase that I thought would be more polite".

Naruto set aside a moment to wonder what phrase or phrases Gaara had culled as _impolite_.

"G-Gaara, look, I'm flattered...", He wasn't, actually, but it was a nicer word that 'bamboozled'. He didn't want to offend a friend, and just as important, he didn't want to offend a guy who had metric tons of animate sand at his disposal. Not to mention the shared head-space with a murderous Tanuki demon.

"But I'm not really interested in guys.", he finished triumphantly. A small, white lie. Hardly even a lie at all. He had almost no interest in guys _other than Sasuke_. But that was completely OK, because damned Sasuke was always being an exception to the rules, and Naruto was used to that by now. At least as used to it as he would ever get.

Naruto's impenetrable defense turned out to be not as foolproof as he thought, because while Gaara didn't look angry about it, he also didn't look convinced.

"What about Sasuke.", Gaara wasn't asking a question, he was issuing a challenge.

"That- that's just _different._", Naruto sputtered. Gods, he must have been even more obvious then he'd thought if _Gaara_, of all people, was able to pick up on that. Gaara, who was about as empathetic as a rock. Naruto was too surprised by Gaara's unexpected emotional perspicacity to deny anything.

"Sasuke, he's my teammate, even if the bastard thinks that he's left me and Sakura behind. We went through a lot together. A lot of it sucked, and we didn't always like each other, but even then we were still connected. We made each other stronger. There's a lot of history there, so even if he is an ass, he's still one of my most precious people. That makes all of the difference. I mean, that and he's pretty. It's not my fault that he emits some kind of stupid Uchiha sex pheromone that makes half of Konoha wanna' bang him ". That was Naruto's favorite theory on the matter, at least. Unfortunately, Gaara still didn't seem convinced.

In fact, Gaara looked worse than unconvinced. His eyes had narrowed further, and his mouth tugged down first at one corner, then the other, in a worrisome frown. Worrisome for Naruto, that was. His fingers were twitching in a way that made Naruto expect them to clench into fists at any moment, and faint ribbons of sand undulated about their master's heels in a manner that made Naruto want to take a step back into defensive posture. He didn't, because that would have been insulting, and insulting his friend any further would be cruel, as well as stupid. He wished that he knew what he'd said wrong in the first place. Gaara hadn't seemed offended by the initial rebuff, so Naruto knew that he must have stuck his foot in his mouth somewhere along the line.

Even as Naruto tried to remember his exact words to review them in his mind, Gaara drew in a deep, cleansing breath, and forced himself to relax a little bit. Without the added pressure of the possibility of having to fend off an impending Desert Coffin, Naruto was able to pinpoint what he had said wrong. Or rather, what he hadn't said right.

He'd stated that Sasuke was precious to him, and sexy as hell, as the reasons that Naruto would make an exception. Which implied that Gaara was neither of those things. And while it was true that Sasuke was more important to Naruto than any one, since the two boys had been obsessed with each other for years (Naruto refused to think that it was one-sided), he really did care about Gaara, too. And Gaara had to be at least a little bit sexy, with all those fan-girls, even if Naruto personally couldn't see it. The lack of visible pupils and blank expression weren't exactly turn-ons for him.

"Gaara...", Naruto trailed off. He wanted to make things right between them, but he didn't know how to go about it. He wasn't sure that there even_ was_ a right way to reject someone. Reject. It was a harsh word. He felt a shiver of guilt at the thought of adding another rejection to the long list that Gaara had already suffered, and forced himself to firm his resolve. He was _not_ even going to consider having sex with Gaara out of some misguided sense of guilt or pity. He wasn't. Even if Gaara might not be able to tell the difference between pity sex and genuine affection any way, it would still be unfair to both of them.

"Look Gaara, I did a crap job of explaining myself. It's not that you aren't important to me. You're one of my precious people too, you know". Some of the stony edge to Gaara's expression softened at that. Apparently he _hadn't_ known, or had at least needed to hear it. Encouraged, Naruto forged on. "And it's not like you're hard on the eyes, really. It's just that I've never considered you in that way before, and well... It's really _weird _to have the idea suddenly dropped on me. And maybe I could warm up to it given enough time, but right at this moment, it just feels wrong. Sasuke is the only guy I've ever felt that way for, and it took me a long time to realize it. And I saw him every day, touched him every day, even if it was just us trying to beat the shit out of each other. Even after all that, I only recently started to feel OK with the whole thing."

"Which sucks, with him being a missing nin, the bastard". Naruto concluded, with a wry frown. Gaara cocked his head to the side, and let out an amused snort. At least, Naruto was pretty sure that it was amused, and not condescending, but it was always hard to tell with Gaara. He didn't look discouraged. Instead, his inward-focused expression spoke of mental gears turning. If this were a fight, Naruto felt that Gaara would have just executed a test-strike to gauge his response, and was now tensing for a more serious attack. It made Naruto uneasy to see that look in the context of a personal conversation between friends. I made him uneasier still when Gaara opened his mouth to speak.

"As I understand it, most of your reluctance to have sex with me stems from me being male. You seem to have lower standards for women. Would you be more open to the idea if I were female?", Gaara asked. Naruto was puzzled by the question, and Gaara's opaque expression and lack of inflection didn't help to shed light on the matter. He was belatedly a little bit miffed on Sakura's behalf at that 'lower standards' comment, but couldn't bring himself to disagree with it in a broader sense. Still, Gaara was asking a question about a hypothetical situation, and last that Naruto had checked, Gaara didn't really _do_ hypothetical.

"Ah... I suppose so. I guess that would seem a little bit more normal, though really-", He was cut of by a sudden motion of Gaara's hands. It took a moment for him to recognize the movement as a seal. He leapt back a few strides out of reflex, even though he trusted Gaara, as he was these days, not to attack a friend. Mostly. It took a moment longer for him to recognize the series of seals that Gaara was forming as slightly familiar. Naruto's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. Surely Gaara couldn't be serious. _That_ jutsu wasn't useful as anything more than a distraction.

Gaara didn't vocalize the name of the technique, but after the hand seals were complete, a thin veil of sand rose up in a cyclone around him. Naruto could still see Gaara's figure beneath the translucent shimmer of the sand, but the details were blurred. After a moment the pale grains slowed, then ceased their circling, finally drifting down like dust motes to settle around Gaara's sandaled feet.

"Is this better?", Gaara asked. His voice sounded closer to how Naruto remembered it from when they were twelve years old and participating in the Chuunin Exam than the his usual low tone, though without his past self's hateful growl infusing it. Naruto would have paused to think more on that, but Gaara's eyes were the most intense that Naruto had seen them in a long time. Naruto couldn't identify the emotion in them, but there was an evaluating quality that reminded him of Hyuuga eyes, as if Gaara was trying to gauge Naruto's thoughts by boring straight through his skull and into his brain.

"Huh?", Naruto said after a moment, tearing his gaze away from Gaara's face to stare awkwardly into the space above his left shoulder. It wasn't the same as a piercing glare of killing intent, but Gaara's eyes were still pretty creepy at that moment.

"This. Is this better?", Gaara said, with a hint of annoyance in that strangely young voice that hadn't been there a few minutes earlier. Naruto belatedly noticed that Gaara was gesturing to his own body as he said it. And Naruto could all of a sudden see the reason for those gestures, because Gaara body had definitely been changed by that half-familiar jutsu.

The first things to catch Naruto's attention were the softer jaw-line and more rounded face, although the changes were subtle enough that Gaara still looked very much like himself. It was like looking at a familiar object through the bottom of a glass. The eyes were the same, and the dark rings around them. Hair was the same. The impatient and increasingly annoyed expression was the same. Naruto also had to look down a little bit to see the growing irritation in those eyes, because where Gaara had been just a hair's breadth shorter than him before, he was now lacking a few extra inches. He may have even been shorter than Sakura.

Speaking of comparisons to Sakura, there was one addition lower down, just noticeable under Gaara's heavy (and now baggy) clothes. Hips. Slightly flared out girl-hips that tapered inward at the waist, leading the eyes up to...

Naruto tried not to goggle to much at the slight, decidedly unmanly swell of Gaara's chest beneath the dusty, red fabric and worn buckles of his coat. Breasts. Girl-hips. The higher voice.

'_Is this better?_'

Gods, Gaara had gone and made himself a girl. Because he wanted Naruto to have sex with him. When exactly had Naruto's day taken a turn into utter madness?

Still, curiosity was slowly burrowing through Naruto's shell of shock. Whatever Gaara had done, it was _not_ the Oiroke no Jutsu, of that Naruto was sure. As the maker of that technique, he would know. The seals weren't the same, the flow of chakra involved didn't feel the same, and the results weren't exactly the same either. Whatever Gaara had done was more complicated, and involved a much larger expenditure of chakra than Naruto's little distraction technique. Had he seriously found a way to change sexes for real?

Onlookers didn't usually have the chance to notice, but the Oiroke no Jutsu wasn't much of a transformation technique. 'Naruko's' body may look sexy and feminine behind clouds of smoke, but the truth was that 'she' hadn't even had nipples until Konohamaru had tweaked the jutsu for realism. The anatomy lower down was even less realistic, and below the skin, the user's anatomy remained all male, even though the body's shape was strangely deformed.

Gaara seemed pretty convinced that Naruto _could_ actually have sex with him in that form, which meant that he was either very naive, very confused, or that he'd come up with an extremely complex and useful technique. The possible uses for undercover missions _alone_ were phenomenal, and Naruto was certain that Sakura would find such a complete body transformation technique to be a valuable springboard for medical jutsu.

He_ had_ to know for sure exactly how far Gaara's technique went.

"Take off your coat", He said, voice rough, words more direct then he had intended. It took Gaara's smug expression afterward to remind Naruto that to Gaara, this wasn't about making an incredibly impressive and useful new technique, this was about getting into Naruto's pants.

And Naruto had just told him to take his clothes off. _Fuck_.

Well, he'd sort it out in a minute. First he had to confirm that the technique really was as revolutionary as he thought it was. Though how he was going to do that without _really_ giving Gaara the wrong idea, he had no clue.

An anticipatory silence hung between them as Gaara worked at his harness and coat fastenings, broken only by the creak of dry leather straps and the shush of the red cotton canvas over skin as he slipped his arms from the sleeves. His gourd fell to the ground with a solid_ thunk_, and the coat was tossed after it with little ceremony, leaving him in his darker, more light-weight shirt and trousers. The material was thin enough that Naruto could immediately tell that at the very least, Gaara had improved one thing over the original Oiroke no Jutsu. There were small peaks on the twin swells of flesh that lay just under that fabric.

Naruto raised his hands in an unconscious gesture to confirm through touch. The fingers of his right hand brushed against the side of Gaara's left breast before his mind caught up. Mortified, he aborted the motion and laid his hands on Gaara's shoulders instead.

"This isn't my jutsu", he said, after an awkward moment spent staring into Gaara's widened eyes. The body beneath his palms was motionless, breathing steady, but Naruto still felt as though Gaara seemed anxious. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part, so he wouldn't feel like he was making such an ass of himself.

"No. I fixed it", Gaara replied.

"Hey, it didn't need fixed! It worked just fine!". Naruto flung his arms wide in a surely-you-can-behold-my-genius sort of gesture. Gaara's lips fell into a small frown, hairless brows bunched in a doubtful expression.

"It was incomplete."

"It did exactly what it was supposed to! It was only ever meant to be a distraction technique. I admit, if yours is really as complete as you say it is, then that makes it more useful, but it must have been horrible coming up with something so complex, not to mention hazardous to your health. I didn't think that it could be done. How long did it take you, any way?".

"I started researching the possibility shortly after you and Elder Chiyo brought me back from the dead". The phrase 'brought me back from the dead' was spoken with as little inflection as a more ordinary sort of person would say 'brought me back some eggs from the market'. Ever since his participation in the Chuunin Exams, Gaara never seemed to get excited about much. Which was probably a good thing, since 'excited' was usually synonymous with 'homicidal', in Gaara's case.

"You're telling me that you spent eighteen months working on this, for the sole purpose of seducing me."

"Only on my own time. And I plan to unveil it for other purposes, just as soon as I've tested it more", Gaara said peevishly. He didn't take kindly to the inference that he had neglected his duties as Kazekage for something frivolous. "I wasn't able to complete it until after I accepted Shukaku back into me. The increase in my base chakra level made the testing go much faster, although I'm sure that I could have eventually finished without it."

"I-, Gaara, to be honest, I'm not quite sure what to say. But could we maybe take this somewhere a little bit more private?". Naruto felt awkward enough, without the added discomfort of the boiling sun and pale, reflective sand shining in his eyes like an unsubtle interrogation technique.

"There is no one else around. In my own element, I would know."

"Humor me, please."

Gaara nodded, and stepped closer to Naruto, not quite touching. As a vortex of sand surrounded both of them, Gaara spoke quietly, "You still haven't answered my question".

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Gaara's private quarters were large, comfortable, and looked less than half as lived in as his office. They also had no windows, unless you counted the tiny air vents that ran vertically down from the ceiling here and there. Naruto wondered if Shukaku was a burrowing animal, or if Gaara was just that paranoid. He didn't ask.

He probably would have asked, in fact, except that Gaara chose that moment to start shedding other articles of clothing. Gaara noted Naruto's horrified expression, and forestalled whatever unpleasant, and undoubtably _loud_ comment was about to come out of Naruto's mouth with words of his own.

"You want to see how complete the jutsu is, don't you?"

It was true, Naruto _did_ want to see how complete the jutsu was. Still, he couldn't adopt Gaara's cavalier attitude, especially since this wasn't just about seeing a new jutsu in action. To Gaara, it seemed to be about_ getting_ some action.

He fidgeted awkwardly as his friend continued to divest himself of his inner garments. Naruto's eyes ricocheted from the pale expanse of skin that was all too quickly being revealed, to the bare dressing table to his left, then to his own shoes, and so on and so forth. No matter what else he tried to look at, he couldn't prevent his gaze from flitting back to Gaara every few moments. His years of traveling with Jiraya had instilled in him a deep wariness of staring at a naked woman's body. Part of him was tense and expecting to get slapped at any moment, no matter that this was entirely Gaara's idea.

Just as he started to develop a headache from trying to look in twenty different directions at once with only two eyes at his disposal, Naruto's efforts to not look too closely at Gaara came to a screeching halt. It was hard not to stare at someone who was staring at _you_ first, much less someone doing so while stark naked. Gaara's head was tilted slightly to the side again, expression serene, but the arms crossed just under his, _her_, breasts spoke of defensiveness, impatience, or some other mildly unpleasant emotion that it wasn't wise to evoke in a demon host.

Gaara let her arms fall slack to her sides, brushing against pale skin, and tilted her chin up slightly. It wasn't a 'come hither' expression so much as it was a challenge, but regardless, she obviously expected Naruto to perform a closer inspection.

Naruto took a reluctant step forward, then another. He took in the swell of breast, the soft curve of hip, and the triangular thatch of red curls nesting above the shadowed cleft between Gaara's thighs. Her skin had a strange, matte quality, which Naruto took a few seconds to recognize as the still-active sand barrier. He raised a thumb to her collarbone, stroking over it to get a feel for the fine-grained texture. His stomach was squirming uncomfortably with some nameless feeling, and he knew with sudden clarity that he wanted, just once, to see his friend shed that barrier of his own free will. Not because he had been struck hard enough to crack his defenses, but as a gesture of trust.

"Take it off", Naruto whispered, not quelling the impulse. Gaara didn't have to ask what he meant, and a moment later fine streams of sand began to trickle down onto the tile.

Gaara's skin, shed of sand, was milky pale, and just translucent enough for Naruto to faintly make out the network of arteries branching beneath it. He again raised a hand to Gaara's shoulder, and traced over the bony ridge of her collarbone. Her skin was very soft, but very dry, almost as though it had been talced. He watched his own fingers, hardly feeling as though they were connected to his body, as they trailed along her shoulder, down her arm. They settled just above her elbow, and Naruto finally took note of the fact that Gaara hadn't so much as breathed since Naruto had touched her.

As if on cue, she inhaled suddenly, a short, nervous gasp. Naruto dragged his sluggish eyes up to look into Gaara's. They were wider than he had ever seen them before, the unsettling, pale irises completely surrounded by white. Her breaths came in increasingly short huffs, working quickly into hyperventilation. Naruto's eyes widened in response. This wasn't the reaction that he had anticipated.

_Then again, what did I expect? I don't think that anyone has ever touched him like this before. Gods, this is-_

Both of Naruto's hands swept up along Gaara's arms, then swiftly pulled her into an embrace. He didn't know what else to do. He doubted that this would even be comforting, but maybe for Gaara, human contact was like jumping into cold water; something best gotten over and done with in one abrupt shock. She stopped breathing again for another few seconds, followed by a few hiccoughing gasps, then released a ragged sigh. She didn't exactly go limp in his arms, but some of the tension corded in her muscles eased. He pulled her more firmly against himself, and rested his cheek against her short, wild hair. It wasn't bristly the way he expected, but it wasn't completely soft either. He brought one hand up to her scalp, and combed his fingers through the haphazard spikes that felt like an animal's pelt, all long, rough guard-hairs at the outsides, and fine, downy fur toward her skull. Maybe it was a Bijou thing. Naruto's own hair was similar, but the contrast of harsh and soft seemed more exaggerated in Garaa's. Then again, Gaara always had been more connected with his Tailed Beast than Naruto. His seal was less refined, and didn't cordon the demon off in a convenient corner of his subconscious the way Naruto's did.

Naruto ran his fingers through Gaara's hair more assertively, curled fingers massaging her scalp in a way that he had sometimes seen parents do to comfort their younger children. Sakura had even done it a handful of times for him in this frustrating last year of trying and failing to find Sasuke and bring him home, when his usually bottomless pool of enthusiasm dropped to shallow, listless levels. Gaara made a small, surprised sound, and tensed back up before she let go completely and slumped bonelessly against Naruto's chest. The action spoke of exhaustion more than pleasure, but Naruto took it as encouragement nonetheless. They stood that way together for a few timeless minutes, before Naruto dared to pull back enough to look at Gaara's face.

Her eyes were almost sleepy under half-mast black lids, but her expression was hard to interpret. Gaara didn't seem to be any more emotive as a girl. She seemed almost braced for something, and Naruto realized that the thing that she was hardening herself against was his rejection. It suddenly came to him that what he was doing, pushing physical boundaries and comforting her this way, was a cruelty. He had no intention of following through. Gaara hadn't expressed any genuine sexual interest him, even in close contact, which made Naruto feel even more guilty. He knew now that this wasn't about curiosity or pent up sexual frustration. He was sure that Gaara had gotten himself somehow twisted up over the idea that sex was something that human beings did, something that they desired almost above anything else, and Gaara so badly wanted to be human.

Nothing that Naruto could say would convince him that human was exactly what Gaara already _was_.

But maybe he could _show_ him.

Naruto had always been geared toward action. He made instantaneous decisions with often surprising and sometimes disastrous consequences. And he knew that he had just made another one. He was going to give Gaara what he had asked for. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that Gaara was now wearing a female body, and while rationally Naruto knew that Gaara was the same as he always was in mind, Naruto couldn't help being more gentle and attentive with the girl version. Sakura would probably kick his ass for his sexism if she found out. Then again, she might kick his ass for a lot of other reasons if she knew what he was about to do.

"Gaara... Alright.", He said. "Alright". He smiled warmly, not his usual infectious grin, but still genuine, and leaned forward to press his lips to Gaara's.

Gaara was doing his best impression of a statue again, but Naruto knew how to fix that. He allowed one hand to trail down to her waist, and the other to resume its scalp massage. She relaxed again, lips slightly parted. Naruto thought about trying to bring some tongue into things, but decided against it. He wasn't confident in his more advanced kissing skills, as this was his first real kiss. That accident with Sasuke and practice with his own shadow clones really didn't count. Then again, at least he was better than Gaara, who was just standing there like some kind of limp dishrag.

Further uncharitable reflections on Gaara's inability to kiss were forestalled as Gaara finally took a more active role in events. It wasn't much, just a slight return of pressure against Naruto's lips, but it made all of the difference in the world. He hummed into her mouth encouragingly, and she reached out to him for the first time, bringing one hand to his hip. Her fingers clenched tightly at the orange fabric of his pants, and clawed somewhat painfully at the flesh beneath. Gaara was a stranger to gentle touch, and it showed

Naruto slowly came to the realization that his scratchy, sandy clothing probably wasn't very comfortable rubbing up against Gaara's bare skin. He made a soft noise against Gaara's mouth before lowering the hand in her hair to his jacket zipper. He took a step back, and set about peeling off his travel-worn clothing. He scrunched up his nose at the rank odor of his own body, but this thing, whatever exactly it was, with Gaara was delicate enough that he didn't feel he could risk time out for a shower. Gaara, meanwhile, had relocated to the bed, probably with the practical notion that that's where they were supposed to end up any way. She was perched on the edge of it, legs spread in what would have been a lewd manner on any born woman, but was completely guileless on her. There may not have been anything sexual in her manner, but it sure as Hell didn't leave much to the imagination, and Naruto felt his face warm in a fierce blush that was only partly to do with the fact that he was stripped down to his socks and underwear.

This was all incredibly _weird._

He tossed the last of his garments aside in clumsy haste, then moved forward to stand between Gaara's splayed thighs. Gaara was staring down at Naruto's crotch with a vague frown, which Naruto found more and more insulting with every second.

"You're not aroused. You don't want this.", Gaara finally said. Naruto rolled his eyes in exasperation, although he felt just a hint of relief that _that_ was the problem.

"Give me a few minutes, geez. I'm nervous. That takes some time to work off, you know?". To judge by her puzzled expression, Gaara obviously didn't know. Naruto tamped down ruthlessly on the surge of hysteria that he felt over the now apparent fact that he was about to have sex with a person who had never so much as experienced sexual arousal. Some men would have been delighted to take the virginity of someone so naive, but Naruto was horrified. If he messed up, Gaara would probably be turned off of sex for life. This was way too much responsibility.

On the other hand, people were always telling him that he had to be more responsible if he wanted to be Hokage some day. This seemed like a good place to start, although he was pretty sure that his well-intentioned advisors wouldn't agree.

A newfound sense of determination welled up in him. Rising above expectation was familiar ground to him, and familiarity was just what he needed to make him comfortable. He was going to have sex with Gaara, and Gaara was going to enjoy it! He would make it so.

"Lay down.", He ordered. Gaara scooted back onto the mattress with incongruous grace. Then she laid down flat on her back with her arms to her side, like a corpse on an autopsy table. Naruto wasn't sure wether he wanted to laugh or cry. This was going to take a lot of work.

He crawled up until he was straddled over her, their only point of contact his knees against the outsides of her thighs. He buried his fingers in the soft hair at the base of her skull, and circled his thumb over the delicate skin behind her ear for a few moments, before leaning down for another kiss. Quick on the uptake, she pressed forward to meet him almost immediately. This time Naruto allowed himself to tentatively sweep his tongue between her parted lips. He tried not to make it too harsh or slobbery, as he had it on loud authority from Ino that girls hated that. Of course, Gaara wasn't really a girl, but Naruto was trying to ignore that small detail.

Eventually, the hand in Gaara's hair migrated down over the now familiar territory of her clavicle, and onward to the less familiar rise of her right breast. It was small and firm, about the same size as he expected Sakura's to be, and that thought shot a tremulous spike of arousal shivering down his spine. He circled over her nipple with a calloused thumb, and she squirmed almost imperceptibly beneath him. His hand migrated to her other breast to repeat the action, but this time Gaara just tensed up slightly instead of repeating that intriguing squirm.

As Naruto trailed his hands over more of her body, she tensed up tighter and tighter, until even her lips stopped moving against his. It was horrible, like embracing a plank, and the worst part was that Naruto's body had finally decided to take interest in current events. It was completely unfair, and he didn't know how to fix it.

"What am I doing wrong?", he asked, a hint of a whine coloring his voice.

"I don't know.", Gaara's tone was withdrawn, almost mechanical. Naruto sighed in misery and slumped down onto his elbows, feeling very put upon. Without intent, his arousal bumped against the wiry patch of hair above Gaara's sex. The effect was electric.

Gaara's eyes widened and her mouth parted slightly in shock. Before Naruto could draw back or apologize, her arms and legs clamped around him like manacles, and she hauled him down against her. Naruto couldn't hold back a groan at the startling sensation of finding himself wedged between her thighs. And maybe that was just as well, because suddenly she was clawing at his shoulders, and mumbling into his neck.

"You want this. You want _me_. You're not just doing this out of pity.", Which was... somewhat accurate. Naruto wasn't about to correct her by saying that he had only agreed to this out of guilt, especially since he was now much more enthusiastic about the idea based on its own merits. So instead of saying anything, he rubbed himself gently against her, and tongued at the hollow at the base of her throat.

She made a low sound of approval, and her grip on him slackened under pleasure's lazy influence. He slid down to mouth at her breasts, sucking softly on one nipple, then the other, as his fingers massaged whichever breast he wasn't currently nuzzling. One hand voyaged bravely down to the juncture of her thighs, brushing over red curls and against promising wetness.

Naruto's only real sexual experience had been a drunken and embarrassingly short encounter with a prostitute that Jiraya had paid to service him. It had been an inebriated joke, of sorts, one in extremely bad taste. Still, Naruto had learned one thing from it, and that was that he'd need to have a better idea of what the fuck he was doing when he tried it with someone that he actually cared about. He'd read one of Jiraya's books for the first time soon after, and now it was time to put his textbook knowledge into practice. With Gaara already wet and writhing against him, he was off to a good start, but much as he wanted to just thrust into her, that probably wasn't the best way to go about it. Especially since displeasure on her part could result in a Desert Coffin for him, and he was too horny now to properly defend himself.

In the interest of keeping things pleasant and nonviolent, he licked his way further down her body. He paused briefly to flick his tongue into her navel, which seemed to amuse him more than her, and then got down to business. She tasted something like earth, and something like ocean, and he found that it was not nearly as bad as he'd expected it to be. And even though he felt like he'd be picking short, red hairs out of his teeth for days, the delicate trembling of her limbs, and the muffled sounds that it pulled from her made it all strangely gratifying.

Naruto kept at it until his tongue was numb deadweight, and hoped that was enough preparation. He slid back up her body to kiss her, and she didn't seem disgusted by the taste of herself in his mouth. Finally, he let himself sink down into her. Or that was his intention, but reality was much more awkward, and left him sliding against her in a way that she seemed to find very rewarding, but wasn't quite what he was going for.

"Put me in.", He growled. She wrapped one hand around him without further prompting, and the expression on his face was probably comical as she did so. But he wasn't going to worry about that, because she guided him as he pressed forward, and it was indescribably _good_. He moaned and buried his head into her shoulder, trying not to start humping her like some kind of mindless animal, however much he felt like one. It took him a few deep breaths to realize that she was tense as a board again, and that there was an ominous, gritty, slithering sound coming from the part of the room that her gourd had been resting in. This was very, very _bad_.

"Shh, just relax. It'll feel good in a minute, I promise.", He crooned, then winced at his own patronizing tone. The glare that Gaara projected up at him let him know of her own displeasure. Despite that, he couldn't seem to stop himself from babbling more useless reassurances, even as her brow furrowed, and her mouth fell into an annoyed frown.

"Shut up. The sand won't hurt you. Just _move_.", She gritted out. Naruto shut up as instructed, and began to rock his hips in delicate little motions that had her digging her unpleasantly sharp nails into his back in warning. He took the hint and was a bit more forceful, and after a few minutes she relaxed under him again.

Unfortunately, by the time she started to actually _enjoy_ herself, he was reaching the end of his endurance. All it took was one guttural moan from her, and a sharp squeeze from the thighs wrapped around him that had him sinking in deeper than ever, and he was finished. She snarled in unfamiliar, aching frustration as he panted on top of her, limp from the most intense climax of his life.

He didn't get to enjoy that pleasant lethergy for very long, because he quickly found himself slammed onto his back, with Gaara perched on top of him. She looked angry and bewildered. Naruto really wanted a few minutes to himself for his over sensitized flesh to recover, but he wasn't just going to leave her hanging. Aside from being rude, it wasn't good self-preservation. So he rested his hands on her hips, and guided her into a rocking motion that he hoped she would enjoy. She must have liked the new position, because her hands shoved at his chest, and she ground herself against him with all of the power and subtlety of a landslide. It didn't take long for that relentless intensity to inspire matched enthusiasm on his part, and soon his own hands were gripping fiercely at her deceptively soft hips as he thrust up into her.

Gaara made an abrupt sort of yowl, and arched her back as she clenched around him. She sank bonelessly across his chest, and Naruto slammed into that slick tightness a few more times before unwinding to join her in a limp tangle of limbs.

She slid off of him, and curled against his side, and Naruto grinned at her. This was about as good as he'd ever felt in his life. Gaara herself looked sleepy and content. Her expression wasn't quite happiness, but she was more relaxed than Naruto had ever seen her. The softening of the usual sharp lines of tension around her eyes and mouth made her look younger, less dangerous. Combined with the deceptively soft look of her body (Gaara never _had_ been much for taijutsu), she barely looked like a ninja at all. If one didn't dwell too much on the black rings around her eyes, or the bloody red symbol on her forehead, that was.

Naruto lay with her for a few minutes in a happy absence of thought, before his own body odor caught up with him again. And looking over his splayed body, he noticed a sickening glisten of red that let him know that Gaara had bled on him. Ugh.

"I need a shower. Desperately.", He said. Gaara waved a lethargic arm in the vague direction of what Naruto had assumed to be a closet. On closer inspection, it was a bathroom. It was small but clean, and the strange, dry quality to the air let him know that it wasn't used much. That, and it had the neat, vacant soap and towel arrangement of a hotel room. Did Gaara ever spend time in his own quarters for anything more than a change of clothes?

"Do you want a shower?", Naruto asked, popping his head out of the bathroom door like a gopher from its den.

"Not right now.", Gaara mumbled. She looked half asleep, and Naruto wondered if he should be worried about that.

"Uh, you look really tired. Is it alright for you to take a nap?", Naruto asked. He tried to sound casual, and not like he was waiting to hear confirmation or denial of the possibility of Shukaku going on a rampage.

"Mm. Not for too long, but a nap is fine. Don't use too much water. You're in the desert.", And with that Gaara closed her eyes, and pulled the sheets up over her head like a cocoon. Well, that solved the burrowing animal question, among others.

Naruto shut the door behind him, and started the shower. As tepid, weirdly saline water ran over him, the pleasant disconnect that he'd been feeling ever since Gaara brought him in out of the desert began to dissipate. He felt queasy.

What had seemed like the only kind option at the time now seemed profoundly stupid. As soon as things had started to get physical, he'd stopped really thinking of Gaara as _Gaara_, and started thinking of her in terms of some strangely identical twin sister. But that wasn't the case, as their little conversation had reminded him. This was _Gaara_. The Kazekage. A guy with a demon inside of him, who Naruto had always empathized with, and wished that they saw each other more, so they could be better friends. And there went _that_ notion, the idea behind this little excursion to Suna, because everything was going to be awkward and horrible now. He didn't even know what Gaara expected from him after this. He felt a wave of resentment toward his friend wash over him, and guilt followed swift behind it.

He ran himself in mental circles until it occurred to him that he had just taken an extremely long shower, and Gaara definitely wasn't going to approve. Then he let the water run another five minutes, because he had the perverse urge to do something that Gaara didn't approve of. That lasted until the guilt caught up with him again, and he reluctantly turned off the spray and dried himself with a very fluffy and obviously never used towel from the nearest rack.

He slunk out past Gaara, who seemed to be dozing under the covers, or at least faking it convincingly. The smell of his traveling clothes was even more offensive after he himself was clean, but Naruto pulled them on any way. This situation was likely going to call for a lot of unpleasant but necessary things. The first thing being to wake up Gaara, because Naruto needed to strike out on his own to think for a while, and he wasn't callous enough to leave without saying anything.

That proved unnecessary, because Gaara was sitting up and staring at him from the bed. Still naked, although the sheets were crumpled over her thighs, and Naruto was glad that they hid any tinge of red from view. He wondered how Gaara was going to explain that to the housekeeping staff, but being Kazekage probably meant that you didn't have to explain that sort of thing. Being a demon container with a history of violence and bloodlust might help, too.

"Gaara-"

"He'll be near Konoha in four days."

"Huh?", Naruto had no idea what Gaara was talking about. She was tense and shut down again, and Naruto didn't know what to make of it.

"It takes three days to get there.", Gaara continued, as though she was making any sense.

And suddenly it _did_ make sense, because there was only one 'he' that plagued Naruto's every waking and dreaming thought. And he was suddenly so enraged that he knew his eyes had to be glowing red. How _dare_ Gaara waste time playing this sick little game with him when he had that kind of information to share. Gaara really _was_ a monster if he could discard his only friend's most important goal so callously. And Naruto was back to thinking of Gaara as Gaara, and not some vulnerable _girl_ that he had to be nice to, and he knew that whatever came out of his mouth next was going to be mean, and aimed to hurt. But for this betrayal, Gaara deserved it.

"What, is this my pay for getting you off? If I didn't _fuck_ you, were you even going to tell me?!", His volume rose until he was shouting the last two words. Gaara was standing in front of him now, expression unruffled, with tacky smears of blood on her thighs. Naruto had a fist raised to strike him, but he couldn't quite bring himself to strike a naked, bleeding woman, even if that woman was a_ man_ who really deserved it.

"I was going to tell you as soon as you said no. I didn't expect...", Gaara trailed off, although there was no sign of uncertainty in his expression.

"Let me get this straight. You spent _eighteen__ months_ working on a jutsu designed solely to get into my pants, and you didn't even expect it to _work_? That's pathetic.", Naruto couldn't even begin to understand that. What kind of nutjob spent so much time and effort on a plan that they expected to fail?

Gaara didn't flinch, but his chin rose, his spine straightened, and his hands clenched at his sides in what was a clear 'fuck you' from someone who was usually so reserved.

"Four days.", Gaara repeated.

Naruto was already slamming the door behind him.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Gaara sat on the bed for hours, and watched the blood on his thighs turn brown and fissure with hairline cracks. There wasn't much of it, but he wasn't used to seeing his own blood at all, and it stood out starkly against the white of his skin. It was disgusting, so he took a shower, being careful to use water sparingly after Naruto's selfish waste.

Afterward, he curled up in the middle of his soiled bed, and laid there under the covers until dawn.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

**End Notes:** Well, I started this chapter with the intention of making it to 5,000 words, but it wound up being almost twice that. Apparently I like to hear myself talk. Type. Whatever.

You'll most like have noticed that the pronouns in this story are a little bit strange. I'm not randomly switching between them. I pick whichever one seem most appropriate for the occasion. Having skulked at the fringes of the genderqueer community on and off for years, I've learned that pronouns are slippery things, and not always as fixed as you would imagine them to be. It should also be noted that this chapter was Naruto-centric, and thus reflects Naruto's personality and thought patterns. I figure that Naruto's attitude toward sex and gender is that they're the same thing, so whenever he's focusing on Gaara's girly-bits, he's going to think 'her', not 'him'. More familiar aspects of Gaara are still going to register as male.

The next chapter will be Gaara-centric, with maybe some Temari thrown in, and it will be interesting to see their take on the whole thing.

I briefly considered the idea of using gender-neutral pronouns for Gaara in this story, but rejected it as, 1.) Distracting, and 2.) Not in keeping with the ongoing theme of gender _confusion_.

I have no beta, so this story is entirely unedited. Feel free to notify me of any errors or inconsistencies that you may come across. I'm hoping to get the next chapter out in a week or so, but I am terribly unreliable when it comes to WIPs. Here's hoping.


	2. Fertility

**Author's Notes: **It occurred to me shortly after posting chapter one that Naruto may have come across as uncharacteristically insensitive and cranky. I promise that he will not stay that way forever. Keep in mind that the Hokage sent him away in the first place because he was stressed out, and frightening the villagers with his displays of temper. Add to that three days of nonstop running through the desert, and no chance to eat or clean up before being dragged into Gaara's weirdness. Mix in the final insult of Gaara withholding information from him about Sasuke, the lack of which was driving him up the wall in the first place, and you have one _very_ pissy Naruto.

For warnings, pairings, and disclaimer, see Chapter 1: Audacity.

**Chapter 2: Fertility**

Gaara stared down at the unfamiliar lines of his body. It ached in places that he wasn't even used to having, and still bled sluggishly at any sudden movement. Sex with Naruto had done him more damage than all but the most challenging of battles was able to. It wasn't what he had expected.

Of course, what he had expected was for Naruto to not have sex with him at all. Oh, he had some small hope that his plan would work, but he had gone into it with the knowledge that he would probably get nothing more out of it than a complex and useful new jutsu. Which was a better consolation prize than he had received over the years for many of his other failures.

He had hoped that Naruto wouldn't be too angry at his delay in relaying the information about Sasuke, but hope and expectation were vastly different things, and _that_ had gone about as well as he had expected. He would have been better off if he had followed the Godaime Hokage's request, and not said anything about it at all. But Naruto was his first and only real friend, if he _was_ still a friend, and Gaara had been unable to betray him that way. He understood the Fifth's concerns, and on some level agreed with them, but he would do anything in his power to help Naruto find happiness.

He should have kept that in mind before setting his plan in motion. It had been selfish and poorly timed, but with Sasuke's return to Konoha imminent, Gaara knew that he was never going to have another chance. Anyone who knew Naruto and Sasuke at all knew that they would be lovers, given the opportunity. And loyalty ran too deep in Naruto for him to betray that kind of bond.

This pain was Gaara's punishment for acting on selfish desires. Maybe this time, the lesson would stick.

Regardless, his internal clock informed him that the sun was now fully above the horizon, and the clock of a more mechanical sort on his desk confirmed it. He was the Kazekage. He had important things to do, and self-castigation was something that he did not have time for. It was past time for him to use the jutsu for reverse transformation, and to return his attention solely to his duties. His village was counting on him.

The resentful thought bubbled up that his village was counting on him to do _paperwork_, but he quashed it as it formed. Not all necessary things were interesting, and taking care of Suna couldn't involve fighting S-class missing nin all of the time. He should be more grateful for the peace that allowed most of his high ranking ninja to run missions for pay these days, and not in defense of their own territory.

He formed the seals that would return him to his natural form, and channeled his chakra into precise points throughout his entire body. He felt a strange tingling sensation, which quickly became an unbearable inferno raging through his each and every nerve. He dropped the jutsu like a curious child drops an unexpectedly hot frying pan.

Something was very wrong.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Temari had brought tea to Gaara's office, expecting to find him ploughing through paperwork after another sleepless night. Even though he had mastered his demon well enough now to doze for short periods of time, he rarely did so. After one glorious year of being able to enjoy the healing benefits of REM sleep, these past six months had been hard on him. Temari expected that he would eventually collapse out of sheer exhaustion during one of his more boring council meetings, and that Shukaku would gleefully take over and wreak havoc. When it happened, Temari would laugh, and say 'I told you so'. Except that Shukaku would be on a rampage, and the village would be destroyed, so she'd be laughing from the pits of Hell.

Back to the topic at hand. Gaara wasn't in his office.

Temari set the tea tray down on one corner of Gaara's monstrosity of a desk. The stacks of paper were well organized, but they still didn't leave much room to spare. It looked like he'd been stealing work from his underlings again. She snorted. He may as well give them all paid vacation and be done with it. This relatively new spin on her brother's neurosis was much more benign than his past habit of using people as stress balls, but it had reached an excessive enough level that she was going to have to do something about it. She wondered if it would be more effective to try to talk some sense into to Gaara directly, or to just threaten his subordinates with slow, agonizing death if they allowed him to take even one more document from them. Of course, a person would have to be an imbecile to deny her brother anything, so she'd better think of something convincing to say to him.

She wondered where he was.

Well, there was no use looking for him. He was probably out in the desert, chasing gazelle over the dunes, or whatever it was that he found so fascinating out there. If there was one thing that she could count on, it was that he knew how to look after himself in that wasteland. Now if only he managed half so well in captivity.

With a frustrated sigh, Temari sat down in Gaara's rigid, posture-enforcing chair, and shuffled through the shortest stack of papers for ones that she was allowed to sign off on. That turned out to be almost all of them. She made a silent vow to speak to Gaara about delegation of authority the very next time that she saw him, because this was ridiculous.

It was a full half hour before Gaara set foot in his office. He looked blanker than usual. In fact...

"Gaara, why am I talking to a sand clone?", She asked. This was unlike him. He barely used clones in battle, much less to run errands for him. The lack of practice showed. The clone's face had a grainy, non-reflective quality that wasn't as skin-like as Gaara's own sand barrier.

"There is something wrong with me.", It said. Temari's first thought was, 'No shit', because there were a lot of things wrong with Gaara, but dread caught up with her a moment later. Whatever the problem was, it was guaranteed to be major, because he wasn't the type to ask for help.

"Tell me.", She demanded.

"I'm in my room", It replied, before it disintegrated into a swirl of sand and disappeared. The information wasn't what she had asked for, but she wasn't going to complain. Speaking to Gaara directly would be more useful. A sand clone did only what it was told to, and didn't have the full range of its maker's memories and personality to draw on the way that a shadow clone did. She needed to see her brother in person.

She walked briskly down the hall to Gaara's quarters. However quickly she wanted to get there, it might send the ANBU into a panic if they saw her moving at a dead run. The apartment that she was heading for wasn't fit for a kage, no more than redecorated office space, to be honest. But Gaara liked having rooms so close to his work, and he barely spent time there any way. If someone had the temerity to say to his face that the Kazekage should live in a more dignified home, Gaara pointed out that, as Kazekage, he could live wherever he damned well pleased. His father's estate had been donated as a new educational facility as soon as Gaara came into power, and neither he nor his siblings were sad to remove themselves from it. It housed too many unpleasant memories for all of them.

Temari's anxiety level increased exponentially when another clone answered Gaara's bedroom door. It peered at her with a vacant expression, blocking the entrance as she shifted her weight restlessly from side to side out in the hallway. After a few second of unhelpful staring, she shoved past it, then locked and bolted the door behind herself.

"Gaara, I'm sick of talking to your idiot statues! Tell me what's wrong.", She spoke loudly, ignoring the clone entirely, and raked her eyes over the room. Her brother didn't seem to be in it. However, the clone grabbed her arm before she could conduct a more thorough search, and turned her around to look at it.

"Temari.", It said. She could have dispersed it with one good punch, but she decided that the quickest way to get to the root of this problem was probably to play by Gaara's rules. However strange they were.

"Tell me.", She repeated.

"I was testing a new transformation jutsu, and I can't reverse the effects. It's hard to explain.", It said. Then added, "I'm in the bathroom.", before it dissolved into a small dune at her feet.

Temari wasn't sure why Gaara couldn't have just explained that to her in person. Whatever new transformation he had managed, it must have been beyond disturbing, if he thought that she couldn't handle the sight of it without a warning. Maybe he'd sprouted fangs and claws, and Shukaku didn't want to give them up. That would be pretty horrifying, but it she didn't think that it could rival the grotesque sight of Gaara in his mini-Shukaku form. That Tanuki was one _ugly_ animal. Even if by some chance it was more shocking than that, Temari promised herself that she wouldn't shrink away from him. It had taken her too many years to see the human being under the layers of insanity, and she wouldn't allow any superficial change to alter that. He had come so far from those days of bestial violence, so she would accept any skin-deep deformities unflinchingly.

Easier said than done, but with that mental pep-talk, she felt ready to tackle the bathroom door. She found Gaara sitting on the edge of the bathtub, looking very unlike the Tanuki. In fact, other than a few minor alterations, he looked perfectly normal, if a little bit embarrassed. _There_ was an emotion that she didn't think she'd ever seen cross his face before.

"This was your big emergency? And here I was all worried, damn it.", She mused.

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Gaara stared up at his sister incredulously. This _was_ an emergency. And he was mortified that he needed her help. He frowned in irritation at her easy dismissal of his problem, and wondered if he should have contacted Kankuro, instead. Probably not. His brother might have actually _laughed_ at him.

"This is Naruto's jutsu, right?", She said, as she tried and failed to hide an amused smirk.

"No. It's not. This is somewhat more advanced.", Gaara corrected her. At that, Temari's expression dimmed.

"Are you telling me that you don't just _look_ like a girl.", she growled.

"Yes.", He confirmed. Temari had a look that suggested the she was simultaneously very impressed, and very tempted to strangle the life out of him for being so stupid.

"And you thought that it would be a good idea to test an advanced transformation jutsu, for the first time, without proper medical supervision, _why_?", She demanded. Gaara avoided her angry gaze, another behavior that was unlike him. His usual tactic when his sister was mad at him was to stare at her until she got tired of badgering him for a response, and left.

It took him a long time respond. He wasn't eager to divulge the last piece of pertinent information to her.

"I have tested it many times before this. I have never been unable to change back.", He said, his voice so quiet that it was almost a whisper. His sister was as shocked as he expected her to be. She raised a hand to straighten one of her ponytails, a nervous gesture, and opened and closed her mouth a few times, unable to find the right words. She unceremoniously grabbed one of his hands, and hauled him to his feet. It was the first time that she had ever held his hand like that, and he looked at her with wide, startled eyes.

"We're going to see a medic.", She said. Her no-nonsense tone brooked no room for argument.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Elder Azami was a shriveled, twig-like husk of a woman, with a piercing cackle that immediately set Temari's teeth on edge. She forced herself to ignore it, because Azami was also the best medic that the village had to offer.

"The last I checked, the Kazekage was a man. Being his sister, I would expect you to know that sort of thing.", She crowed. She wouldn't even accept Temari's word that the red-haired girl in front of her _was_ Gaara, much less examine him.

"Just look at his chakra, if you don't believe me.", Temari forced the words out through gritted teeth. The old woman, in an obvious effort to humor her, raised a hand to Gaara's forehead in order to assess his chakra patterns. A raised eyebrow was her only response to the unmistakable pulse of demonic chakra mingling with her patient's own.

"My apologies, Kazekage-sama. But I'm surprised that you would be so foolish as to test a new jutsu without the supervision of a medic nin.", She said, though she didn't sound apologetic in the least. On any other day, she may have been taking her life into her own hands by showing her Kazekage such disrespect, but Gaara barely seemed to hear her. Temari may as well have been standing next to one of his clones, from the level of reactivity that he was demonstrating. After an awkward few seconds of silence, Temari replied on her brother's behalf.

"He told me that it's not a new jutsu. That he's tested it many times before, and has never had this problem.", She said, hoping fervently that her brother would take over his part of the conversation soon. Acting as his parrot was getting old.

"Hmm. Well then, I'm going to have to ask your _brother_ to strip, and lay down on the exam table. As family, you can stay.", The last part was clearly a , 'you _will_ stay.', and not a polite invitation. She wasn't fool enough to lay a hand on the Jinchuuriki without backup from someone who (presumably) knew how to calm him if he became agitated.

Azami no longer displayed the aura of skeptical good humor that she had greeted them with. Her mouth was puckered, as though she had just sucked on a lemon, and her salt and pepper brows were scrunched down close over her eyes in disapproval. She watched as Gaara, who was strangely nonchalant about being spoken of as if he wasn't in the room with them, followed her instructions without complaint. As he wasn't wearing his coat or gourd, it didn't take long for him to undress, and settle himself on the table.

Temari had never seen her brother naked before, so she wasn't sure if seeing him this way was better or worse than seeing him as his usual self would have been. Although he had been embarrassed earlier, it didn't seem to stem from the change in his body. He disrobed without making eye contact, but also without hesitance. He probably just felt incompetent for not being able to reverse his own jutsu. And to be honest, Temari was becoming increasingly concerned by that herself. A person didn't just _stop_ being able to use a jutsu, for no apparent reason. Especially if they had invented it in the first place.

Azami poked and prodded Gaara, starting with his extremities. She tested his reflexes, and the mobility of each individual joint. Temari felt sick watching it. Gaara let his body be manipulated by Azami in a limp, unflinching manner that made the scene resemble nothing so much as Kankuro doing maintenance on one of his puppets. Temari was sure that there had to be a faster, more dignified way to go about it, but when she tapped her fingers against her hip and glared at the old woman with impatience, all she receive in return was an impenetrable stare. Finally, Azami began checking his eyes, ears, and airways. She moved down to the heart and lungs, and frowned when she seemed to find nothing of note there. At last, her hands paused just below Gaara's naval. They hovered there for a long while, her gnarled fingers slightly atremble, surprise plain on her face until she forcibly blanked it. Temari waited in anxious silence for the diagnosis.

"Well, this day is just one surprise after another.", Azami said, some of the amused cackle that so annoyed Temari seeping back into her voice. She turned to addressed Gaara directly. "Kazekage-sama, after a thorough exam, the reason that you haven't been able to complete the reverse transformation is obvious. You have acquired a third source of chakra. To put it bluntly, you're pregnant."

Gaara's eyes as he turned to look at his sister were wide with shock, irises constricted into pinpoints of translucent green, which was always an ominous indicator for his mental stability. Temari spared a moment to be grateful for the absence of his gourd. Not that he couldn't summon it at any time, but she hoped that it wouldn't come to that.

"You can't be serious.", She snapped. This had to be some kind of stupid revenge for giving the old harpy such a shock. The idea was absurd, even more so than the rest of this insane morning.

"I am dead serious, I assure you.", Azami replied. If she was lying Temari could see no sign of it.

"How could that even have happened?", Temari enunciated, being very careful not to yell. Gaara looked more dazed than potentially murderous, but considering the situation, it would be better not to agitate him.

"The way that it usually does, I expect. Unplanned pregnancy is always a shock to those involved. I understand that this is even more of a surprise than usual, but denying it won't make it go away.", Was Azami's tart reply.

"Look, there's _no way _that... I mean, I would _know_ if...", Temari trailed off. She _would_ know if her baby brother was sexually active, wouldn't she? He wasn't very forthcoming, but surely she couldn't have missed something that huge. However, looking at Gaara's distant expression, and the tense line of his jaw, she felt a miserable ball of distress knot up in her gut. He wasn't saying anything to the contrary. Hadn't she just been thinking this morning that he was hard to keep track of?

Gods, her little brother had gotten himself knocked up. Some bastard was going to _die_ for this.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Gaara sat cross-legged on one corner of his bed. The maids had been in to change the sheets, and there was no sign of his and Naruto's earlier activities. As if it had never happened. Except that, according to the medic, he was carrying a much more lasting reminder of the previous night around with him. He believed her, but he couldn't seem to dredge up any genuine feeling over the matter. Temari kept sending him anxious glances, making frequent motions to reach out to him, before halting at the last second. He wanted to tell her that he was fine, that she didn't have to worry about him losing control over himself or over his demon, but he couldn't seem to summon the energy that such reassurances would require.

He felt like he was having an out of body experience. That only seemed right, since this wasn't really his body at all. The longer he stayed in this alien form, the more disconnected he felt. When he smoothed a hand over the sheets beside him, it was like watching a stranger do it. He could barely feel the soft, somewhat slippery texture of the cotton against his fingertips. The numbness he felt inside was contaminating his other senses. Temari was saying something to him, but the only thing he heard was a faint buzzing sound inside of his own head. His vision tunneled and blurred, glazing everything the same shade of red as Naruto's angry eyes. His existence felt tenuous, as if he was trapped in a waking dream.

It was the thought of dreams that snapped him back into himself enough to make him take a closer look at his own body. There were glowing, blue lines creeping down around his arms. With this self-awareness came the renewed ability to hear what Temari was saying, _screaming_ really.

"-hold of yourself! Damn it, everything will be _fine_! Just... calm down.", Her voice wavered and faded as she noticed that her brother was finally looking at her, and not _through_ her. She was trembling badly, and her eyes gleamed with unshed wetness. Gaara knew that she was trying to convince herself as much as him that everything would be OK, but her obvious hysteria was only setting him more on edge.

He needed to leave before he hurt her, or some other person who didn't deserve it. He wasn't safe to be around.

"Temari, stop. I'm going out. I'll be back when... I'll be back.", Gaara hissed. He raised a hand to his head as it began a sudden throbbing, and dug his fingers into his hair in a vain attempt to dull the pain. Naruto had run his fingers over Gaara's scalp in a way that had made him feel warm and calm, but he couldn't replicate that peace on his own. It seemed that, like love, that feeling was something that had to be given to him by another person. And no one was likely to offer it to him.

"Be safe.", Temari whispered. She stepped forward and raised a hand to cup her brother's cheek, but he vanished in a swirl of sand before she could make contact.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Temari barely spared a look for the concerned ANBU standing guard outside of Gaara's door. She swept down the corridors of Hidden Sand's government building like a hurricane, eyes in search of a familiar, painted face. She had to tell Kankurou, although as a loyal shinobi to Hidden Sand, her first thought should have been to inform the ANBU or the Council of Elders. The situation had made Gaara more unstable than she had seen him in a long time, and they needed to be informed of the potential threat.

That's what she _should_ concern herself with, but the Council could go fuck themselves. This was a family affair.

Gods,_where_ was her brother? That could go for either of them, but Kankurou was the one that she needed to find. Gaara would be deep in the wastelands by now, protecting his village from himself. No harm would come to or from him, out there.

She eventually spotted Kankuro less than a block from his apartment. He was clearly on his way home from the market, bags of groceries hung from each arm. They swayed and bumped each other as he walked, dust flirting with his ankles in the heat of the noonday sun. He was smiling a little to himself, as if he had just recalled an amusing joke. Temari felt almost bad about needing to ruin his good mood. A larger, less charitable part of her wanted some company for her misery, and was eager to wipe that stupid grin off of his face.

She trotted up to him, and he raised one grocery-weighted hand in greeting. Her expression must have been grim, because the faint smile disappeared completely, and he looked her over with frank concern. She didn't answer his unspoken question, but grabbed the bags from his right hand in a brief meeting of calloused fingers. She settled the bags around her own right wrist. The weight of a milk bottle and what felt to be a whole lot of instant ramen settled against her thigh in a comforting lump. As long as the world still contained such mundane activities as grocery shopping, it couldn't have gone too far to hell. Everything would be fine. It wasn't as if war had been declared, or some other _real_ catastrophe had come to pass.

She shoved aside the thought that she would _prefer_ a war, because at least she knew what to do in one. Instruction on how to take care of your pregnant younger _brother_ wasn't something covered by the academy curriculum. She wondered if it soon _would_ be, once Gaara's stupidly useful new jutsu made it into circulation. In all honesty, right now she didn't care about anybody's little brother but her own.

"I need to talk to you.", Temari said as she followed Kankurou into the cool, messy recess of his bachelor pad. His apartment was no bigger than Gaara's, but unlike his brother's, his actually looked lived in. It _smelled_ very lived in as well, Temari thought as she wrinkled her nose at his overflowing laundry basket. At least, she assumed that the basket was buried somewhere under the pile of ripe, black clothing. Maybe she would hire him a maid for his next birthday. _She _sure as hell wasn't touching his mess.

"Yeah, that was my first thought when you ran up to me, looking like someone had just killed your dog. Which you don't have. So what's the problem?", He said as he set his grocery bags down on top of a stack of unopened mail. The pile of clutter on his kitchen table rustled a bit, but nothing fell off, to Temari's surprise. She decided that she wasn't going to hire him a maid after all. She'd buy him trash bags, and a mop. How any one could live like this, she didn't know.

"You won't believe me. You'll think I'm joking.", She said, and oh how she _wished_ that the whole thing was one sick jest.

"Temari, I think that I know better than anyone the limits on your sense of humor. You didn't even think it was funny that one time I-"

"That's because it wasn't! But I'm not getting into that right now. I... It's about Gaara.", She choked out. She didn't know how she was going to explain. She'd seen it with her own eyes, and it was still hard for her to accept.

"You know Uzumaki's stupid party trick?", She asked. It seemed like a good way to ease into the conversation.

"The Oiroke no Jutsu? Sure, I know it. I think that anybody who's ever seen the kid tipsy knows that jutsu, and the story of how he 'invented it all by himself'. Why, did he use it on Gaara or something? More power to him, if he managed to defrost our little brother a bit.", Kankurou speculated. He seemed very puzzled about the direction their conversation was taking.

"What? No, that's not it. I mean, Uzumaki's not even in the village.", Temari said.

"Sure he is. I ran into him yesterday. I took him to see Gaara myself, even though he needed a shower like the desert needs rain. Haven't you seen him yet?", Kankurou replied.

Temari felt shock claw through her chest like a panicked animal. Rage stalked swift at its heels. Uzumaki Naruto was in Suna. Or he had been, yesterday. She had known that Gaara was obsessed with the boy, his first and only real friend. The only other person who knew what it was like to carry a demon inside of them. She knew that Gaara loved him, or felt something for Naruto as close to love as he was capable of. She just hadn't considered the possibility of it turning into something sexual. She also couldn't imagine Naruto returning Gaara's interest. Despite his status as Kazekage, Gaara had very few people that were really a part of his world. Of that short list, Naruto's name was at the top as his most important person. Naruto, on the other hand, drew others to him like a street lamp draws bugs. He had any number of people that he was closer to than Gaara. It didn't make sense for him to start a relationship with someone so far from home.

Of course, she was assuming that it was a _relationship_. There didn't need to be a relationship for there to be sex.

"Uzumaki is a dead man.", She breathed. Maybe she was assuming the worst, but the worst seemed likely given the evidence. If they were in a relationship, Gaara would have sought out Naruto before her. Hell, Naruto would have been _there_ when Gaara realized that he couldn't change back. And if they were in any kind of _healthy_ relationship, Gaara wouldn't have had to invent that fucking jutsu in the first place, because Naruto would have wanted him the way that he was. But she had seen neither hide nor hair of the boy, who was impossible to miss, being so loud and being so fond of the color orange. She could only assume that he had left, after staying just long enough to fuck her brother. She didn't care how often he had rescued Gaara from the brink of death and madness in the past. For this offense, his life was forfeit.

Kankurou watched helplessly as his sister overturned his kitchen table in a violent rage. The burst carton of milk leaked a puddle under some crumpled packages of ramen. The sight of them made Temari want to hit something even more.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

The desert had been calm that morning, and Gaara was able to pick up the trail of Naruto's footprints with little difficulty. He followed them for a few miles, out of some vague notion of confronting Naruto, and explaining the situation to him. Gaara would be able to catch up before Naruto reached the border, if he pushed his chakra reserves to the limit, and traveled in a series of transportation jutsu. However, just as Hidden Sand was swallowed out of sight behind him by the looming, pale forms of the dunes, Gaara abandoned that plan. Naruto didn't want to see him right now, and they would probably end up wasting a lot of time brawling before Gaara had a chance to speak with him at all. That wasted time would only make Naruto more angry.

To be perfectly honest, Gaara didn't feel like he wanted to see Naruto, either.

Even though Naruto's righteous fury was about what he had expected, it still hurt. Part of him had hoped that Naruto would once again exceed his expectations. He had wanted to believe that Naruto would be able to surprise him with hope and acceptance, like a hidden weapons specialist pulling blades out of thin air. It wasn't like he hadn't set a precedence for that kind of thing in the past. So while Gaara hadn't been shocked by his friend's anger, he had still felt a crushing disappointment in reaction to it.

He'd been surprised, as well, that Naruto had been so deliberately hurtful with his words. It wasn't a side of him the Gaara had seen before. He had expected Naruto to react with impulsive physical violence, not cruel accusations. Naruto was usually the type to throw a punch first and talk later. Gaara would have vastly preferred that Naruto struck him. Hearing his only friend rage and call him pathetic had made his chest ache with a debilitating pain that he hadn't felt since the days following Yashamaru's betrayal. How loathsome was he in Naruto's eyes that his friend would reserve that kind of scorn only for him? He hadn't even been worth hitting.

Gaara clenched his fingers in distress as he altered his path to go south. Today had left him with the familiar urge to slowly squeeze the life out of something, until it died feeling even more horrible then he did. That wasn't the kind of therapy that he indulged in any more. He certainly _could_ hunt down some mindless animal to take his hurt out on. There was life aplenty in the desert if one knew where to look. But spilling blood of any kind without necessity was a slippery slope that he didn't want to skid down again. His village needed him rational. So he ran, heedless of the blazing sun above, toward one of the true wastelands of Wind Country.

There was life in most of the desert, though hidden from untrained eyes. Small, brown shrubs with bulbous roots buried under the sand. Spiny lizards, and dust-colored snakes that mimicked the motion of wind over the dunes. There were chitinous black beetles, and large-eared foxes that came out of their burrows only in the cool relief of night. Even tribes of gazelle and more elusive oryx that wandered between oases. It was surprising what could live in such a barren environment, one which cycled through daily extremes of burning and freezing, with no shelter but the windblown, shifting sands. However, in the midst of such tenacious life, there were a few bleak pockets of desert where not even the most determined of organisms could survive.

He could harm nothing there. The wastelands would become no more inhospitable, despite whatever damage he unleashed on them.

Gaara traveled for hours, until the yellow-orange dunes under his feet flattened out into an expanse of pale gray. He wrinkled his nose at the texture of the earth under his feet. It was closer to silt than sand, and he sunk into it with each step, sending bone-dry motes to float up to his knees.

He untied the sash from around his waist, and wound it twice over his nose and mouth, allowing the long ends of the fabric to flutter behind his head in the inconstant breeze. It would not be a good idea to breathe in the minerals that he kicked up. The particles would settle into his lungs, and no amount of medical jutsu would remove them. That was bad enough, but some of the components of the ashy sediment were poisonous. If he thought that he felt bad _now_, it would be nothing compared to the terminal agony of swollen, burning lungs that awaited anyone ignorant or foolish enough to wander through this particular patch of wasteland bare-faced.

Gaara was not a fool, and he knew the desert better than he knew himself. There was no naturally occurring danger in his own territory that he couldn't compensate for.

The gourd dissolved off of his back, and into a seething mass around his legs. It did not settle into a definite form, but instead serpentined around him like a nest of snakes one moment, then formed small arms and claws the next, scratching hungrily at the ground. A second later it resembled a hedgehog's spines, jutted outward in a defensive posture. He allowed the sand to shift and change as it willed, while he took a few deep, calming breaths through the linen cloth pressed over his nose.

His sand had always moved on its own. In later years, he had learned how to manipulate it as he wished, but without his firm intent to guide it, it remained in constant motion. He no longer believed that the sand was his mother, but it still seemed to possess some supernatural intelligence that belonged to neither Shukaku nor himself. It was a mystery that he had long since lost interest in puzzling out. As long as it did what he needed it to do, the how's and why's of it didn't concern him.

Here, he would be limited to only that chakra-infused sand. The toxic earth around him did not respond well enough to his will to make it worth using. Still, what he had would be more than enough.

With that thought, he began running again. There wasn't much to destroy out here, but the cluster of twisted rock formations in the distance would suffice.

As he ran, the sand bubbled over his body. Most of it settled along his arms, and elongated into blue-veined claws that covered and extended beyond his own hands. Once they were fully formed, he dropped down to run on all fours in a lurching gallop, his claws leaving soft furrows in the dust beneath him. A fine trail of sand slithered down his spine, and stretched out behind him in a vague tail. Bit by bit, he let go of the feeling of hurt that Naruto had caused him, and let his own anger rise up to displace it. His eyes bled to black and gold, Shukaku a violent, rising presence in his mind.

The Tailed Beast did not, as many people seemed to think, manifest as a voice that spoke to him. If that had been the case, he could have sifted it out as 'other', separate from himself, even as a small child. Shukaku was instead an insidious tangle of thoughts and impulses that coiled through Gaara's own. It had taken him years to be able to differentiate between his own desires and the demon's. Sometimes he still had difficulty, especially when he was angry, and his and the Tanuki's rage thrummed in one synchronous, bloody urge to tear and destroy.

The only time that Shukaku was aware enough to have a voice was when Gaara was in deep sleep. For one of them to be fully ascendant, the other had to be smothered in the dark of dreams. The Tanuki dreamt solely of destruction, and sometimes that slumbering madness sent Gaara spiraling down into a black mood, although he rarely let it effect his outward behavior. Likewise, Gaara's own feelings could stir its sleeping mind to greater depths of hatred, but even on such occasions it did not become self aware enough to speak to him.

Gaara allowed his rage to meld with Shukaku's own bestial hatred as he leapt onto the nearest rock formation. It was bone white, and formed an arc like a great doorway over the gray earth. It may have been pretty, if it hadn't looked so eerie in the twilight of the wastelands. Regardless, Gaara clawed senselessly at it, and soon it was nothing more than a pile of chalky rubble left to sink into the dust. After a moment of digging vainly through the remains, he moved on to the next monolith, taking a swing at it with one fisted paw. It cracked gloriously under the force of his blow, and before long it joined the archway as a heap of crumbled rock.

In the same manner, he leveled the rest of the surrounding rock formations. The last one to be conquered was a massive, rectangular obelisk. It heaved up a great shower of dust when it slammed to the ground, and left Gaara's hair and clothes an ashen white under the waxing moon. Covered in it as he was, his sand barrier did not allow the poison to touch his skin, and his sash protected him from inhaling much of it.

He scored long furrows in the stone, breaking it into smaller pieces to pound on with his fists. It wasn't a subtle or elegant method, but it gave him a visceral pleasure that standing back and watching his sand destroy from a distance never came close to touching.

He paused at the last and smallest segment, the narrowed tip of the formation. It was still easily twice as big around as himself. He hauled himself up onto it to lay on his back. His chest heaving in exertion, and his heart throbbing a thunderous rhythm beneath his ribs, he allowed himself to cool off. The stirred dust drifted down in ghostly clouds around him, and the sky was littered with more stars than could usually be seen in the artificially lit confines of his village. It was lonely as well as peaceful, and Gaara had finally exhausted himself enough to appreciate that.

He could head back to the village now, without the threat of causing harm to the place and people that he had sworn to protect looming over his head. He _could_ head back, but instead he lingered, allowing the fierce burn to fade from his limbs in the chill air. His ANBU would worry more the longer he stayed missing, but there was still plenty of time to make it back to Suna before the sun rose. His village had no great need of him at this time of night, and he himself needed the calm that laying out under the stars provided. For now, he would indulge himself in this one small thing.

He would face his people in the morning.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

"It's not that I don't believe that _you_ believe what you're saying. It's just that I'm wondering if you banged that blonde head of yours on something hard today. Here, let me check your pupils."

Temari punched her brother's shoulder as he leaned in to examine her eyes, concern plain on his face. It transformed into a pained scowl as she struck him, and he jerked back to rub at his arm, glaring daggers. Gaara wasn't the only member of the family with a frightening glare, but Kankurou's did nothing to phase Temari. After all, Gaara still did it best, and she irritated _him_ on a regular basis.

"I am not concussed, poisoned, or suffering from sunstroke.", Temari hissed at him.

"You have to admit, it's hard to believe. If I told you something like that, you would beat me for lying.", He pointed out, rightfully.

"Yes, well, you're more prone to lying than I am. And be thankful that you're hearing it from me, and not Elder Azami. _You_ didn't have to stand there and watch when she gave our brother a_ pelvic exam_. Or listen while the old bitch harped at him about the importance of folic acid, and the dangers of mercury in seafood. I don't even know why she bothered with that last part, since we live in the_ desert_. You don't catch too many tuna flopping around in the dunes.", She said, with a disgruntled snort. It had been a traumatic experience that not even intense amounts of palm wine could wash away, though she was inclined to try. The image of those crabbed, leathery hands spreading her brothers thighs in a no-nonsense fashion was going to give her nightmares. Gaara had done his worrisome new unstrung puppet act through the entire ordeal, while Azami cackled on and on about what he should and shouldn't eat, and scheduled his next appointment without his input or acknowledgment.

Kankurou's nose wrinkled fastidiously at the words 'pelvic exam'. He looked like he was disgusted enough by her story to believe it. Good. There was the added benefit that ruining someone else's day with mental scarring made her own seem less horrible.

"Thanks for that surplus of information, Temari. Like my brain wasn't broken enough when you told me that Uzumaki screwed my little brother.", He sulked. Temari's expression hardened into something cold and dangerous at the mention of _that name_. Never had her shared blood with Gaara made itself more apparent than in that flat, belligerent stare.

"When I find myself in Konoha again, Uzumaki had better pray that he's away on a mission. If I see him, I'll have Kamatari gnaw the flesh from his bones.", She seethed. Kankurou shuddered a little bit at her tone, and cast about for a change of subject.

"When do you think Gaara will be back, any way? This is something that I have to see for myself.", Kankurou tossed the question out like a shiny lure, and lucky for him, Temari latched on to it.

"I'll be surprised if he isn't back by morning. You know how he is about his damned paperwork these days, he won't be able to leave it alone."

"Yeah, it _has_ gotten pretty bad, hasn't it? Maybe we should return some of the documents to his minions while he's out. They're starting to look bored and edgy, with so little to do.", He suggested. Having so many bored, desk-bound ninja in one place was a recipe for disaster. And they had more than enough disaster on their hands already.

"That's the first decent idea you've had today.", Mused Temari. She hopped down off of her brother's kitchen counter, and formed the seals that would jutsu her to the Kazekage's office. Kankurou blinked, nonplussed, but followed close behind her.

"I didn't necessarily mean _right this minute_.", He complained, with an unbecoming whine in his voice. Nonetheless, he set to work helping his sister sort through the pillars of documents that dominated his brother's desk.

It didn't take very long to sort out Gaara's real paperwork from his subordinates', as it turned out that only a small of fraction of the documents required kage-level security clearance. The real challenge was figuring out which documents went where out of the remainder. It soon became clear that sorting them was taking as much time as signing them would. Soon, Temari was experiencing a sense of_ deja vu_ as she signed one paper after another. At least this time, Kankurou was here to make the work go faster. As much as her brother liked to complain, he was a good shinobi, and he knew when it was fine to grumble, and when it was time to shut up and get to work. She didn't hear so much as a peep out of him until well after sundown.

By that point, even she agreed that it was time for a break. She yawned indelicately, and stretched back over Gaara's horrible, pain-inducing chair to unkink her aching spine. Kankurou raised an eyebrow over the punctuated popping of her vertebrae, but didn't dare comment.

The stacks of paper had been seriously reduced, although there was still what most people would consider to be a lot of work left to do. Of course, most people slept six to eight hours a night, and didn't assign themselves eighteen hour work days. Temari knew that he was just validating his existence in the most healthy way that he knew how to, but she still wished that Gaara would find himself a hobby. Sand mandalas or something. That would fit his new Zen outlook on life well enough.

She suppressed a sigh at the thought. A year ago she might have been bold enough to suggest it to him, but a year ago he had been taking much better care of himself. Shortly after his Tailed Beast was returned to him, that aura of calm that he had worn since before he was elected as kage began to twist and fade into apathy. It was hard to tell the difference if you didn't know him well, but to his sister it was as obvious as the desert was dry that he was depressed. She couldn't fault him for it, especially as the current direction of Wind Country politics wasn't doing anything for his peace of mind. The noble families to the west were murmuring to the tune of, 'remind us why we need a Kazekage, exactly'. It was a cycle that kicked up at least once during every Kazekage's rule, so it wasn't unexpected, it was just awful timing.

"I wish that I could make life easier for him.", Temari said, voice soft and laced with rare affection that she hated for people to notice.

"We do the best we can.", Kankurou said. He knew how much his sister cared, even when she was spitting mad. Still, seeing it so plainly made him uneasy. Temari had had a long day, and he could tell that she wasn't coping with everything as well as she wanted to appear she was. "Unless you discover a long lost scroll of Make It All Better jutsu, which allows you to tap into your big sisterly powers for peace, justice, and the Sunagakure way, our best will have to be enough."

Temari gave him a crooked, watery smile, and smacked his shoulder. It didn't even hurt (much), so he knew that she was grateful. He may have been younger than her, but family was supposed to stick together, and he was glad that he could take care of her in some small way.

"Gaara won't know what to do with himself if we don't at least leave the rest of this for him. I vote that we get some food, and wait for him in his room. He probably won't think to feed himself as soon as he gets back, but I'm sure that he'll need to eat by then.", Kankurou suggested, ever the voice of reason. His siblings may have been good in crisis situations that involved important decisions, and sweeping (often bloody) gestures, but somebody had to remember the less dramatic but equally important things in life. Temari wondered why that didn't extend to de-cluttering his kitchen, or doing his laundry before he ran out of clean underwear.

Oh well. None of them were perfect. And her stomach was letting her know the food was a marvelous idea.

"As long as it's not ramen."

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Gaara ghosted over the desert on a platform of sand, under the ephemeral, pale light that comes just before dawn. He had stopped at an oasis near the poisonous wastes, and his hair and clothes were still damp from the quick bath that he took there. He would not have defiled pure drinking water in such a way, but that small, placid pool had been contaminated long ago by the runoff of toxic minerals. The particles were not nearly as dangerous when suspended in fluid, but they still were not safe to drink, and he would need to rinse the last of them from his skin in his own quarters. He should probably dispose of the clothes, as well. No amount of washing was going to remove the beaten in dust and torn threads from that fabric.

When the walls of Suna were clear before him, he stepped off of the disc of sand, and willed it to stream back into his gourd. He didn't want to have to explain himself as he walked through the streets, empty as they were likely to be, so he teleported back to his room. On most days he would have considered that a stupid waste of chakra, but today was very different from any other day.

It wasn't dark in his bedroom as he expected it to be. He had to squint for a few seconds to adjust to the soft glow of his desk lamp. It took him another embarrassingly long moment to realize that he wasn't alone in the room.

Temari and Kankurou were on the floor, propped up against the bed and each other. White cartons of takeout curry were scattered haphazardly across the carpet, plastic utensils strewn between them like fallen soldiers in village streets. The scent of curry spices tickled his nose. It was probably still fresh enough to eat, but he didn't feel hungry. Fortunately, neither of his siblings stirred to nag him about it. They had obviously fallen asleep while waiting for him to return.

With one last penetrating stare in their direction, he skulked past them and into the bathroom. His clothes went straight into the trash can, with the bag tied shut over them. Another waste, but he had plenty of identical items to replace them. He stepped into the shower, and turned on the spray. It was cold, but he was appalled by the way that some people squandered water while they waited for it to warm up.

He scrubbed his hair and body twice to be safe, as quickly as he could. While he toweled himself dry, he suddenly wished that he owned a bathroom mirror. It had never seemed necessary before. He didn't enjoy seeing the dark rings around his eyes and the scar on his forehead any more often than he had to. But at that moment, he wanted to see if any feral glint, any trace of bloodlust remained in his eyes. He refused to walk around all day looking like some wild animal, even if that may be truer to his inner landscape than the serene mask that he'd cultivated over the years. He gripped the sides of the sink, and drew in a few deep breaths through his nose, expelling them through his mouth in shuddering sighs. In the predawn quiet, he could hear the sound of his own pulse. It was steady and slow, so he trusted that he was wearing an expression to match.

He was as safe to be around as he ever was. It would do.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Temari cracked open an eye as soon as she heard the bathroom door click shut. Trust Gaara to go rampaging through the desert, but not even slam a door in his own village. Kankurou mirrored her motion almost simultaneously, and they stared at one another until the sound of running water made its way to their ears.

"Do you think he noticed that we were awake?", She asked, voice barely more than a whisper. When Gaara had appeared in the room, his expression and the state of his clothing had inspired them to feign sleep. The family meeting could wait until after he pulled himself together. Those gleaming eyes had reminded her too much of their genin days, when trespassing into his room would have been a kill-worthy offense. Meanwhile, the part of her that wasn't focused on self-preservation took note of the fact that he was dusted head to toe in what looked suspiciously like the poisonous mineral powder that was found only in the southeast wastelands. The danger was minimized with the correct safety precautions, but she was unsettled by the idea of him being there at all.

"If he did, he didn't call us on it, and that's really all I care about.", Kankurou replied.

The sound of water petered out after a short time, and soon Gaara emerged from behind the door. At the sight of her brother clad only in a towel, Temari scrunched her eyes shut again. Just because she'd seen it all before, that didn't mean that she wanted to look at it all over again.

She soon made a liar of herself, and watched her brother through slitted eyes as he dropped the towel to root through his drawers for a change of clothes. In the dim light, he barely resembled himself. She realized, with a tight feeling in her chest that set her eyes burning for the third time in less than a day, that he strongly resembled their mother. She had only been three years old when her mother died, and her personal memories of the woman were scattered and vague, but she had a book of old photographs that she took out once a year as a reminder.

Gaara's looks, other than the red hair, had always favored their mother much more than their father. For years, that had just been one more thing that made it painful to be near him. As he had matured, the resemblance had faded enough that Temari was finally able to look at him without resentment. Now, his appearance was more disturbing to her than it had ever been before.

"If you're going to stare, don't pretend otherwise.", Gaara said, without turning to look at her. He didn't sound angry. He didn't sound much of anything, and Temari wasn't sure that was an improvement. She gave up feigning sleep, and beside her Kankurou's eyes opened to the size of saucers. Then he blushed a sunburned shade of red, and turned his head away to look at the wall.

"How did you know we were awake", Kankurou mumbled. That blush was going to take a while to fade.

"Any jounin who slept through that kind of racket, I would send back to the academy", Gaara said, voice muffled as he pulled a loose, black shirt over his head. Temari made a mental note to have some of his clothes altered in the near future. He wasn't exactly swimming in them, but they would still be a liability in a fight. Maybe he could borrow some of hers, until then. Maybe she could alter them herself. That might be best. She didn't know how many people they would be informing of his transformation just yet, and sending his things to a civilian tailor could be a security risk.

As long as she was focused on his wardrobe, she didn't have time to dwell on his uncanny resemblance to a dead woman. Although his expression was all wrong. Mother had never looked so hardened and suspicious, at least not in her pictures, although she couldn't have been smiling much in the final nine months of her life. Temari knew that a large part of it was the black rings around his eyes, but her brother had a face that rarely looked anything but fierce.

And there she went, dwelling on it.

"I need to do something about your clothes.", She suggested tentatively.

"Mm.", He acknowledged. It could have meant anything from 'I heard you', to 'yes, go ahead'. She decided to take it as agreement.

"I have to address the Council.", He added as he strapped his gourd into place.

"Do you have to do that immediately? Maybe you should take a personal day, take some time to adjust...", Kankurou said, tossing a plastic spoon from hand to hand. Temari wasn't at all surprised when Gaara shook his head in disagreement.

"The ANBU will have noticed that something is wrong by now, if not the precise nature of the problem. Everyone with jounin clearance and above needs to be informed of the situation as soon as possible.", Gaara replied. His brusque tone made it seem like the so-called 'situation' was a military threat, and not a personal problem. Temari wasn't sure if she should be relieved at how well he was coping, or if that was just a sign that he wasn't coping at all. He seemed to be externalizing everything, rather than accepting it.

Well, she wasn't about to call him on it. It had already been made clear to her that morning that she had her own issues to work through. As long as her little brother was home, and not rolling around in poison dust, that was enough to satisfy her. It had only been a day since he and Naruto had... Well, it was early stages yet. It was entirely possible that he could miscarry.

She tried, unsuccessfully, to not make that thought into a prayer.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Gaara wasn't sure what to make of his siblings' presence in his rooms. On the one hand, he felt a slight twinge of desperately needed warmth at the fact that they had cared enough to wait up for him. On the other, their nerves were only amplifying his own insecurities. Kankurou's blatant shock was bad enough, but it was nowhere near as unsettling as the lost look in their sister's eyes. He hadn't seen that expression directed at him in years. It made him feel cowardly and monstrous. He wanted to hole himself up some place where she wouldn't look at him that way, or to lash out at her until a harder expression replaced that soft, sad gaze.

He wouldn't allow himself to do either. There was work to be done.

His siblings followed him out the door, and almost trod on his heels as he stopped to wave over the ANBU standing rigidly in an alcove down the hall. The masked man walked up to him without hesitation, his manner formal and unfazed. He did not seem surprised or disturbed by the changes in Gaara's body, which did a lot to confirm his Kazekage's suspicions that his personal guards had know about his little side project for quite some time.

Good. He would have been worried for their competence if they hadn't.

"A Council meeting is to be assembled at the earliest possible convenience. Inform your fellow ANBU, and see it done.", Gaara ordered. The man tipped his head in a quick but formally correct bow, then vanished, leaving only a faint wisp of smoke behind him. Gaara turned to address his siblings.

"Kankurou, stop hovering. I'll eat some of the curry, while you and Temari ready yourselves for the meeting.", Gaara said. They stared at him in puzzled incomprehension as he squeezed past them to his own doorway. "Specifically, go change. You've spent twenty-four hours in the same clothes. It's not difficult to tell."

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving his mildly offended siblings together in the corridor.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

**End Notes:** For me, this was The Morning After chapter in more ways than the obvious. After the giddy ease of producing the Chapter 1, it felt like an unwanted dose of reality. The bright, fun writing style of the previous chapter went out the door with Naruto, and I was suddenly left with only an understandably moody Gaara, and his confused siblings. There wasn't really much to laugh about. Unplanned pregnancy is a Serious Business.

In any case, I am overjoyed that this chapter is complete. I feel much more fondly toward it now that it's finished.

You will have noticed that the pronouns were constant throughout this chapter. The way I see it, Gaara still thinks of himself as male, and Temari knows that it takes more than ovaries to make a woman. The next chapter will likely involve more switching around, as some of it will be Kankurou-centric, and I suspect that he shares Naruto's simple attitude toward sex and gender.

The next chapter will also cover what is likely to be one of the most upsetting moments in this entire story, so I can't say that it will be any perkier than this one. I may, however, include a brief look at what's going on in Konoha, so that we don't all forget that Naruto is an important part of the story, too. If I can't squeeze that in during Chapter 3, then it will _definitely_ be included in Chapter 4.

As usual, this chapter was entirely self-edited. Please feel free to point out any errors or inconsistencies to me via review, e-mail, or a reply on my LiveJournal. I am happy to accept full-contact critique, or anything else that you would like to say about my work.


	3. Atrocity

**Author's Notes:** Well, it only took me a piddling _four months_, but here's chapter three; in which some people's lives suck more than others. A lot of characters are behaving oddly in this chapter, but the circumstances are pretty strange, too.

**Chapter 3: Atrocity**

The Council room was filled with the kind of stunned silence that you could hear your own pulse in. It made Kankurou wish that his wasn't racing quite so rapidly, because the sound of his own jack-rabbitting heartbeat was doing nothing for his nerves. Beside him, Gaara looked completely unfazed by the aftermath of his proclamation that he was temporarily stuck with the results of a transformation jutsu. For a period of approximately nine months. The Council members may have been ancient and inflexible, but they weren't stupid. It didn't take more than a few seconds for them to puzzle out _that_ little clue.

That silence was the calm before the storm. Before long the room was filled with a hushed murmur that quickly rose in volume to a full-on riot. It was a display more apropos to an academy classroom than to a group of purportedly wise and knowledgeable elders. People were all trying to ask questions at the same time, and the noise resembled nothing so much as a mass of carrion birds scrapping over a corpse. The racket continued for several minutes, while Gaara, in an admirable display of patience, waited for them to quiet down, and direct their questions to him one at a time. Kankurou could have told him that he was going to have to wait a good, long while, with the way that the old vultures were squawking, but he was trying to fade into the background. As a puppet master, and brother to a murderous Jinchuuriki, disappearing into the woodwork was something that he'd had many opportunities to practice. And although Gaara was no longer the dangerous animal that had killed people for so much as looking at him the wrong way, Kankurou didn't like the barely noticeable twitch that had worked its way into his brother's fingers.

"Shut up.", Gaara didn't kill anyone for the annoyance, but his bedside manner still left a lot to be desired. The quiet words slithered over the room and shivered down the spines of all present. Gaara was _not_ in a tolerant mood.

The following silence was more morbidly anticipatory than stunned.

"Do not mistake my intent for assembling this meeting. My... situation, is not a subject open for debate. This is not a problem for you to fix. This is a personal matter. I am informing every shinobi of jounin level and above, because I do not wish to be attacked as an imposter in my own office. That is all.", Gaara said. His altered voice was not the masculine growl that Kankurou had grown used to these past few years, but neither was it especially feminine. It had an androgynous quality that made Gaara seem even less human, the ambiguous tone of a wandering djinn, or the undulating howl of wind over the sands. The monotone lack of inflection or emotion was the same as always, at least. Kankurou probably shouldn't have found that comforting, but he did. It helped him to ignore the fact that his little brother had temporarily become his little _sister_.

"Meeting adjourned.", Gaara added, before disappearing in a swirl of sand, while the Council sat in indignant silence.

Kankurou and Temari exchanged a put upon glance. They had come to love their brother dearly, but it was difficult to remember that when he left them to fend off cranky, outraged elders by themselves.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Half a day's travel from Konoha, Naruto came to a sudden stop. He'd had two and a half days to form a plan, and it was time to put it into motion.

Gaara had said specifically that Sasuke would be _outside_ of Konoha in approximately four days. There was no guarantee that he would actually enter the village limits, so Naruto figured that there was no point in him returning to the village himself. He would just have to hope that he would be strong enough drag Sasuke home without backup, should it come to that. But why would Sasuke even be that near to Konoha, if he didn't intend to return under his own power? Naruto's attitude toward that conjecture was ambivalent. He loved Sasuke, his life had practically revolved around the bastard since they were twelve, but he wasn't sure if he could so easily forgive the him without the catharsis of beating him half to death first. And extreme bodily harm probably wasn't the positive reinforcement that would keep Sasuke in Konoha if he _was_ planning to return of his own free will.

If Gaara had even had his facts straight to begin with.

Honestly, it seemed too easy. Every time that he had come close to retrieving his missing teammate in the past, it had required a lot more effort and lead up than this. It had involved trekking to far-off, obscure locations, and bullying even the slightest amount of information from a plethora of dangerous, obnoxious strangers. The past six months had been the hardest yet, because even those troublesome sources of information had dried up. It was as if Sasuke had vanished from the face of the earth. He didn't think that Gaara had lied to him, but this entire scenario seemed implausible. With all of the concentrated searching and digging for information that Konoha had done, wouldn't they have known that Sasuke was coming, long before Gaara, of all people, did?

Still, Naruto was more hopeful than he had been in a long, long time, and Gods damn it, if Gaara had been lying, Naruto was going to show him entire new _worlds_ of pain. Having Shukaku torn clawing and wailing from his _soul_ would be like having a splinter removed by comparison. Naruto was beyond sick of the emotional roller coaster. He didn't know if he could handle another disappointment without breaking.

Naruto had been thinking in that same circle for two days, so there hardly seemed a point in dwelling on it further. With a determined cry of 'Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!', he was surrounded by a mass of nigh on one thousand clones. They didn't wait for his order; they didn't need to. With one intent, they shot off in different directions. It wasn't elegant, but elegant had never been Naruto's style. They would form a perimeter around the village, and alert him of Sasuke's arrival. It wasn't much of a plan, but with all of the complicated plans that Naruto had participated in in the past that had sooner or later gone pear-shaped, he didn't think that a lack of planning could make the situation any _worse_.

With a few low-end genjutsu, and hastily thrown together camouflages, Naruto and his clones avoided the notice of the few people who crossed their paths. They settled in for a long wait.

It turned out to not be as long a wait as anticipated, and Naruto was glad that Gaara hadn't wasted any more of his time, otherwise he may have arrived too late. At midmorning the following day, one of the clones spotted Sasuke. He was strolling through the forest at a leisurely pace, arms crossed over his chest and hands tucked into opposite sleeves. He looked exhausted, almost ill. The bags under his eyes stood out like bruises, and the clone was sharply reminded of Gaara. He walked with steps that, although graceful, had some of the wandering, shuffling quality of a somnambulist's. Dark eyes lifted from their rapt contemplation of the forest floor to stare into the inadequately disguised bunshin's.

"Naruto.", He said. His voice was soft and weary, void of any hint of aggression. "I'll wait here for the real you.", He added. The clone disappeared an instant later.

Naruto blinked as the clone's memory of that anticlimactic conversation worked its way into his brain. That hadn't been what he expected. Part of him was wary of it being a trap, but Sasuke had never been subtle about his treachery in the past. Naruto was surprised that he had peaceably passed along a message to the clone, rather than dispelling it more pointedly with a kunai. There was also an unprecedented lack of a monologue about how he was going to sever his bond with Naruto irrevocably by killing him. The change was refreshing, but Naruto wasn't sure what to make of it.

Despite his misgivings, he didn't hesitate as he sped toward the location that his clone had relayed to him. If Sasuke decided to leave, the extra speed wouldn't do him any good, and the bastard probably deserved to wait, but Naruto couldn't have slowed himself down even had he wanted to. He was impossibly keyed up.

Naruto found Sasuke in nearly the same spot that the clone had, resting wearily against a towering white birch, legs splayed in artful asymmetry over the leaf mould before him. The silvery-pale bark with it's darker whorls, and Sasuke's own black on fair palette gave the scene the delicate, monochrome quality of an ink wash. Like an illustration of a fallen warrior in some revered history text. Something that you would find in a museum, that Naruto would be scolded for touching or looking at too closely. That serene position of repose was not how he had expected to find Sasuke at all, and although it suited the Uchiha, Naruto didn't trust it. It made the rage drain out of him, and something softer well up in the confines of his chest. He couldn't afford to be less than battle-ready at a time like this, but the vision before him made him want nothing more than to lay down and stare up at the leaves with his head in Sasuke's lap, at though that were the natural order of things. Which was absurd, because even _before _Sasuke's defection, such a scene would have been surreal.

"Are you so much better than me now that you don't even have to stand to fight me.", Naruto growled, although he was dismayed to find that his voice lacked conviction. He no longer felt angry enough for this confrontation. He was so confused.

"...What if I don't want to fight you?", Sasuke asked, leaving a pause long enough before the words for the muted sounds of the forest around them to come into focus. He raised his gaze from some indeterminable point around his sandals to Naruto's face, head tilted back against the tree. Strands of blue-black hair tangled and shifted against the bark with the motion, like fragile lines of ink on parchment. Black eyes bore into blue with a diffuse intensity, while Naruto digested the unplanned for concept that Sasuke seemed disinclined to either fight or flee.

"What if I don't care what you want?". The words were aggressive, fighting words, but Naruto's tone was flat. He wondered if Gaara's speech patterns had rubbed off on him a little bit.

"I can't stop you from doing what you want, but I couldn't give you a worthwhile fight right now if my life depended on it. I'll just ask, does it?", Sasuke replied, voice low with what Naruto pinpointed now as profound exhaustion, rather than calm. Was Sasuke injured in some way? Naruto could neither see nor smell blood on him, but there was a pinched, rigid set to Sasuke's face that spoke of pain. He was distracted enough by his visual assessment of Sasuke's health that it took a moment for him to process the question.

"No! What kind of person do you think I am?", Naruto shouted, genuinely hurt. Did Sasuke really think him capable of murdering in cold blood someone who couldn't even defend himself? Much less someone that he really lo-, one of his most precious people, bastard or not. "If you're not lying, if you really can't fight, then I'm not about to kill you while you're too pathetic to stop me. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to hogtie you and drag you back to Konoha myself."

"That won't be necessary.", Sasuke said. Naruto stared at him with saucer-wide eyes. Surely it couldn't be this easy. _Trap!_, his mind screamed. _Trap!_ But this kind of trap wasn't Sasuke's style. Something in his gut unclenched as he stopped trying to strangle his own optimism. Maybe it really _would_ be that easy. Maybe Sasuke really just wanted to come home. Naruto moved closer to the elegant sprawl of his friend, and knelt in front of him.

"Do you.. Are you really...?", Naruto couldn't make a proper sentence of the question, but it was obvious what was meant.

"Everything that I need now, is in Konoha.", Sasuke said, voice quiet but sure. Naruto was looking him straight in the eyes as he said it, and unless Sasuke's ability to lie had increased exponentially, he was sincere. "Naruto, I... Could you help me up?"

Naruto felt a smile tug at his lips, as he clasped Sasuke's pale hand in his own, and hauled him up. Sasuke's grip was weaker than expected, and Naruto had to put more effort into dragging him up than he would have thought. It was worrisome to say the least, but surely nothing that Tsunade couldn't fix. He also knew that his current lack of animosity was born of unspeakable relief. Make no mistake, once Sasuke was back in fighting shape, there was going to be an almighty row.

For now, though, it was more than enough that Sasuke was coming home.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Naruto spotted the first ANBU a few miles outside of the village. He expected a confrontation, or at least some form of acknowledgment, but the masked man disappeared in a translucent puff of smoke almost instantly. It was puzzling the first time, but as each ANBU that he encountered followed suit, it became outrageously suspicious. For that matter, what were so many ANBU doing in the forest just outside of the village? Didn't they have missions to run, fingernails to shove bamboo under, and a Hokage to protect? That sort of thing. It was very strange to see so many of them idling near the village proper.

Naruto cast a doubtful glance at Sasuke, who was shuffling along at what felt like a snail's pace, with his arm thrown over Naruto's shoulders for support. His left foot, the closest to Naruto, was dragging almost imperceptibly at the beginning of every step, and his arm tremored in a way that hinted at something much more ominous than simple exhaustion. Pinpricks of sweat were visible on his brow, and Naruto would have been willing to bet Gama-chan's entire contents that if he felt Sasuke's skin it would be cool and clammy to the touch. The scent of said perspiration had the sharp, off-putting tang of fear, pain, or long illness. Sasuke didn't seem afraid, so it was one, or both, of the other two that was the source of that reek.

Since the ANBU were obviously on alert already, they took the main road for the last mile to the village. They encountered no one along the way, which was just another oddity to add to the list. Before long the gates of Konoha peered at them over the nearest rise. Or rather, it was the massive crowd of people gathered in front of it that did the peering. Many ANBU were among them, and Naruto recognized a few of the masks as belonging to some of the elusive shinobi that he had spotted along the way. At the center of that softly murmuring, shifting group stood the Godaime Hokage. She looked more sober than Naruto had seen her in recent memory. Legs planted wide in a proud, challenging stance, she appeared immovable, a mighty tree with deep roots. She was flanked by a worried Shizune on the right, Tonton snuffling from behind her heels, and a noticeably keyed-up Sakura on the left. Sai, Kakashi, and Yamato were weaving through the crowd, silent and watchful as sharks, gravitating toward individuals who became too loud or angry in clear warning.

Naruto noted that none of those assembled were civilians.

It didn't have the dark aura of a lynch mob, but it was more tense than the triumphant return that Naruto had always envisioned for this day. His lips were momentarily weighed down by a petulant frown as he ruminated over the idea that maybe they would have gotten a more awesome heroes' welcome if Naruto had been allowed to do things his way. If he'd been a catalyst for the event, instead of a last-minute walking stick. But stupid bastard Sasuke had to move events along at his own pace as usual, leaving Naruto to shake off the confusion and catch up, once again.

Still, as Sakura broke free of the formation and ran to the both of them, with the most profound expression of relief that Naruto had ever seen on her face, he couldn't bring himself to care much. Resentment was further swept away as she wrapped him in a quick, one armed hug, followed by the equally quick trail of her green-haloed fingers over his chest as she probed his chakra channels for damage. After a moment's hesitation, she did the same for Sasuke. Surprise passed over her features for just a moment before she pulled away, as if she had found something unexpected, but Naruto was proud to see that she neither trembled nor hesitated at the contact. She was taking this whole situation with better grace than he had, for sure.

Sakura gave a small nod to Tsunade. Naruto had no idea what the significance of the gesture was, but it made the Hokage relax, and brought a sigh of relief from Shizune. With a discreet hand signal from the Godaime, most of the ANBU dispersed. The noise from the remaining ninja increased sharply, but dulled down again as Tsunade spoke.

"Uchiha Sasuke. If you truly intend no harm to the village of Konoha, or to its people, and are prepared to face the consequences of your actions, then I will speak to you in my office.", She proclaimed. She then blinked as Sasuke performed what was likely the most surprising action that any of them had ever seen from him; he bowed. Bent at the waist, torso almost perpendicular to the ground, and head hung low, it was an apology and an indication of submission.

"Oh, stand up you fool. You'll only aggravate your injuries that way.", came Tsunade's flustered snarl of a response, only after which did Sasuke rise.

That was the last that any of them spoke as they set a brisk pace to the Hokage's office. Kakashi, Yamato, and Sai followed at a distance, seeming prepared to perform crowd control as needed. Fortunately, although whispers and accusations rose from the sidelines as they walked, no one was inclined to make an issue of it. Naruto, conditioned to strange stares and hostile muttering from an early age, barely even noticed.

Eight people and a pet pig in the Hokage's personal office made for a more snug gathering than usual. More disconcerting was the atypical lack of empty sake bottles around and on the desk. There didn't even look to be the usual backlog of moldering paperwork. It was a shining model of efficiency.

It became less so when Tsunade knocked everything off of it with one bear-like sweep of her arm.

"I've always wanted to do that.", She said with immense satisfaction. She addressed Sasuke then, "Now sit the hell down, before you _fall_ down."

The last surviving Uchiha gave her a look that clearly expressed how big of a lunatic he though her to be. Nonetheless, he perched himself on the desk like a patient on an exam table. Tsunade didn't quite tell him to open his mouth and say '_aah_', but it was a near thing. She ran her hands over his body, hovering just over the skin for most of the time, only pausing to poke and prod at points of particular interest. An occasional 'hmm' or 'huh' was uttered sporadically, while Naruto shifted uncomfortably. It was becoming increasingly strange to him how not-freaking-out everyone was. Something was off.

"Nerve damage.", Tsunade announced at last, with the self-satisfied air of the only student in the class to know the right answer to a difficult question.

"Yes. I was thrown a large distance onto some very sharp rocks. I was surprised not to break my spine.", Said Sasuke, scowling. Tsunade deflated a bit at the announcement that he already knew the nature of the problem, while Sakura frowned over the diagnosis.

"Well, actually you _did_ break it. Just a little bit.", Tsunade hastened to add the latter sentence when she saw his ill expression.

This was all very congenial, but Naruto's suspicion of how very _reasonable_ everyone was being had finally reached the boiling point.

"Why are none of you surprised?", He asked, voice accusatory. Tsunade and Kakashi traded a look, before mustering paired expressions of contrived puzzlement. Their act was made even less believable by Sakura's obvious display of guilt.

"Naruto, I swear that no one told me until the day after you left for Suna. I would never have kept something like that from you. I don't agree at all-", Tsunade looked on with exasperation, if not surprise, as her apprentice spilled her guts. Honestly, the girl was trained to withstand physical and mental torture, but one wretched look from her teammate had her singing like a nightingale. Oh well, what woman didn't have her little inconsistencies? She graciously forgave the girl.

"Ugly, it's a good thing you don't take away-missions often. Every hidden village on the continent would have Konoha's inside information within a fortnight.", Sai wasn't nearly as understanding.

"Why you-!", Sakura began, voice shrill, before Tsunade cut her off.

"Naruto, I know that what I'm about to say will upset you, but it was done for your own safety. A few months ago, we started to hear rumors that Uchiha Itachi was dead, by his brother's hand. To be honest, we've known that Uchiha Sasuke was approaching Konoha for weeks now. A few select members of ANBU even observed him covertly during that time.", Tsunade rolled her eyes as Sai waved cheerfully at Sasuke after that last. Sasuke's left eyelid twitch slightly in response. Sometimes she felt like she was running a daycare instead of a ninja village. Ignoring the urge to sigh in a world-weary fashion, she forged onward.

"Taking into consideration the increasingly severe injuries that you sustained during confrontations with the Uchiha, in addition to the massive property damage that you have been known to cause in an emotionally involved battle, I decided that it would be better for both Konoha and you if you were in another country entirely while we ascertained Sasuke's motives and intentions."

Naruto just stood there, gobsmacked, as Tsunade explained the entire deception to him. He couldn't believe it. Literally, he could not accept her words as truth, although he felt in some way the massive outline of the rage that was going to come crashing down any minute, as soon as he came to terms with the facts. How could she trust him so little? She had all but promised that he would be Hokage some day, yet she couldn't trust him with something like this?

Apart from that, the gears in his mind were churning over a tangential subject; Gaara. Had Tsunade informed Gaara of all this herself, or had he used his own avenues of information?

"What... did you tell Gaara, exactly?", Naruto asked. His voice sounded far off to his own ears, weak and strange. Tsunade narrowed her eyes at his question, then shrugged as if to say '_the hell with it_'.

"So Gaara couldn't keep his mouth shut, eh. I would say I'm surprised, considering his legendary taciturnity, but he's always been different with you. I should have expected it. Maybe some part of me did, and I was determined to sabotage my own plan all along. In the end, it doesn't really matter. I informed Gaara of the situation a few days before you left. He had some inkling of it from his own network, but nothing confirmed. He had been preparing to pass the information on to me, in fact, although I have no doubt that he would have done so as a personal favor to you, and not out of any overwhelming concern for Konoha in general."

"I wasn't certain that Suna was where you would go, and he seemed doubtful, but I wanted to be prepared. I specifically requested, kage to kage, that he _not_ say anything about it to you. I also included a less formal request for him to contrive some kind of distraction for you. I wasn't lying when I said that you needed a vacation."

"Come to think of it, the reply that he sent wasn't so much an agreement as a 'message received'. I should probably be pissed off that he took my request so lightly."

Naruto felt the force of his ascending rage dampen under a lurching sensation of guilt-induced nausea. Gaara hadn't really betrayed him. His friend (did he have a right to call the Kazekage that any more?) had not been as forthcoming as Naruto would have liked, but "forthcoming" was not a word that he associated with Gaara in the first place. In fact, Gaara had expressly ignored the wishes of a fellow kage, which could have been the basis for a war between two countries that were less closely allied than Konoha and Suna were. As it was, Gaara was lucky that Tsunade was more likely to _stomp_ on than _stand_ on ceremony, because his unwanted interference would be seen as rude to the point of insult. On the heels of his realization of how badly he had misread the situation came a wriggling tendril of dark curiosity. The Hokage had requested that Gaara _distract_ Naruto.

What exactly had been going through Gaara's mind? Naruto was sure that the whole sex _thing_ had been preying on Gaara's thoughts for awhile, and that no one could force him to do anything that he didn't want to do. But had Tsunade's request, combined with the threat of Sasuke's return, sparked something desperate in that twisted brain of his? Because Gaara was blunt and socially clueless, but he really had gotten a little bit better over the years. He must surely have had _some_ inkling that asking your best friend just out of the blue to have sex with you was not normally done. He had been so tense and grim for most of his interaction with Naruto, like a man fighting a battle that he knew he couldn't win. But if he had expected defeat, why had he spent eighteen months perfecting that jutsu? Gaara was an obsessive type, sure, but he was usually more expedient than that. Had he initially had some other, less crazy plan up his sleeve, and the letter from Tsunade had forced his hand?

Although, Naruto could just be attributing more tact and rationality to Gaara than the Kazekage actually possessed.

The puzzled look that Tsunade was giving him was enough to let him know that his thoughts were showing up on his face in a way that he didn't want them to. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about Gaara. He could sort all that out the next time he was in Suna, which would hopefully give both Gaara and himself enough time to distance themselves from the issue. The important thing at the moment was that Sasuke had come home.

Thinking it so clearly somehow made it real.

Sasuke was back!

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

For two weeks after the excitement of the Council meeting, Kankurou observed his siblings' inhuman powers of denial, with increasing incredulity. No one jounin level or below had been informed of his brother's unintentional sex change, and those who _did_ know were doing their best to forget all about it. Gaara and Temari were happy to follow suit, and the awkward parody of business-as-usual that resulted was as painful to watch as an amateur puppeteer's blundering first performance. Really, excruciating.

Gaara had henged herself to look like, well, _himself_ again, and after some practice was able to speak in a tone close to the usual. She was also using an unprecedented number of sand clones. It had done a lot for her technique, but nothing for her coping skills. Meanwhile, Temari was hard at work cleaning her already tidy apartment, and rearranging her furniture multiple times a day. Once she started wearing grooves in the floor from her dedicated furniture relocation program, she came over to Kankurou's place and started decimating the clutter there. While it was nice to have clean laundry, it didn't take long for his sister's obsessive meddling to grate on his nerves.

And then, both she _and_ Gaara had found increasing numbers of documents that they just _had_ to sign right-this-minute-can't-talk-now. The secretaries were looking bereft these days. Most had become prone to taking two hour long lunch breaks, and flicking balls of scrunched up paper at each other to pass the time. With his siblings plowing through the paper trail like demons, there just wasn't enough work to go around.

All of that would have been cause for concern enough, but to top it off, his, uh, _sisters_ seemed to have stopped talking to, visiting, or even making eye contact with one another. Gaara he could understand, because the kid was normally antisocial when stressed. It was Temari that he couldn't figure out. From time to time he would catch her furtively sneaking a look at the Kazekage at the office, eyes suspiciously bloodshot, with bags under them that were starting to rival Gaara's own. Her expression as she looked at their 'sister' was a sharp blend of resentment, fear, and longing. Kankurou wasn't sure what to make of it. Temari was a stubborn, blunt sort of woman, and although she could be subtle on the job, what emotions she did display were in general not hard to read. To him, that conflicted gaze was a strong source of puzzlement and unease.

Kankurou was also in a position to see Gaara's own eyes follow their sister when Temari's back was to them. She was less obvious about staring, but the look itself was easier to read; confusion, and no small amount of hurt.

Living in a part of the world with such a low population density, this was the first time that Kankurou had ever seen two people so miserable about the creation of new life. Yeah, the circumstances were pretty fucking weird, but still, didn't women usually get all joyful and excited about this sort of shit? He had plenty of evidence to support the existence of Temari's hidden sappy side, at least, so why wasn't she lecturing Gaara on his diet (which involved no more calcium or folic acid than it had previously), or learning to knit baby booties, or even just _talking_ about it. She was acting as though their little bro-, _sister_, had contracted leprosy rather than morning sickness. Which hadn't started yet, thank the gods. That was _all_ he needed right now.

Two full-grown shinobi should know better than to tackle a problem by hoping that it would go away of its own accord if they just ignored it for long enough. They weren't being very good role models. Not that the academy kids had any inkling of what was going on with their Kazekage and his immediate family. Which was good, because they would only pick up bad habits if they observed his stupid relatives right now.

It was enough to make anyone tear out their hair in frustration, but Kankurou was a flexible sort of guy. He would cope. And if he couldn't _actually_ cope, he would fake it far more convincingly than his sisters were doing. Honestly, looking at them, one wouldn't think that they had a professional performer in their immediate family. Thankfully, they did, and with any luck, he would be able to pull their proverbial strings like the master puppeteer that he was.

Harmony would be restored to his family, even if it killed someone. Preferably Uzumaki Naruto.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

It took nearly three weeks for Naruto's anger to revive enough for an out and out brawl with the last Uchiha.

To be honest, it wasn't a completely fair fight, since Sasuke was still seeing Sakura on a daily basis to work out the last of the kinks in his fine motor control. Tsunade had handled the initial surgery, but once he was out of the hospital, she left his aftercare in her student's capable hands. When Naruto apologized for taking advantage, as they both lay on the ground covered in sweat and bruises afterward, Sasuke just said that it had been a good way to level the playing field, since Naruto wouldn't have been able to keep up with him otherwise.

That almost started _another _fight, but Sakura forestalled it with two loving punches to the head, one for each of her boys. Those punches had enough 'love' packed into them to have Sai wincing from the other side of the training field, where he was sparring with Yamato. The two of them didn't really need all of that room to spar, but had decided via shared dubious glance, that it was a good idea to give the original members of Team Seven adequate time to work through their issues in their own trademark rowdy fashion. Kakashi-sensei seemed to agree with them, as he had removed himself even further from the scene, to a tree at the very edge of the field. He was reading a book with a tell-tale cover of ragged orange, and seemed to have not even noticed the dispute between his students. Naruto knew that their teacher's inattention was just an act, but he couldn't help but feel that Kakashi was getting even _lazier_ in his old age.

Still, Naruto didn't spare to much though for the slightly muted presence of his teacher and more recently acquired teammates. Sakura and Sasuke had his full attention.

He was happy that Sasuke was receiving equal treatment to him from Sakura. If anything, Sakura seemed less willing to forgive their prodigal teammate than Naruto himself was. But maybe he wasn't wholly forgiving either, since he got a mean satisfaction out of Sakura's new, slightly frosty attitude toward the Uchiha. Regardless, it was obvious to anyone who had eyes to see with that she still loved him. Naruto was just glad that it wasn't the petty, exclusive love that she had felt back in their genin years. He never doubted his welcome with her these days. In fact, he had recently caught her looking at him with a speculative gleam in her eye that, well... He couldn't actually be _that_ lucky, right?

The weird thing was that he wasn't falling all over himself in reaction to it. Nor did he feel angry when he saw her level the same glance at Sasuke. Maybe his bizarre sexual encounter with Gaara had been good for something after all, and had increased his confidence in his own sex appeal. Although, he tried not to think of Gaara much. _That_ was a barrel of snakes that he didn't want to pry open just yet. Not for a long time, if he could help it, cowardly as that was.

There was also the fact that Sasuke himself had taken to sending heated looks his way when he thought that Naruto wasn't paying attention. And they weren't heated in the 'fight me' sort of way, either. In fact, between Sasuke and Sakura's ocular teasing, Naruto spent large tracts of his day feeling hot and bothered in the best possible way. The question was when and how to act on it. There was no 'if'.

After years of frustration and mental anguish, not to mention a fair amount of simple bodily harm, it seemed as though things were _finally_ going Naruto's way. It would be criminal not to take advantage of it. He just had to do so without getting himself slapped, punched, or otherwise bloodied. But he was nothing if not resourceful, and if he played his cards right he could be sharing one of the houses at the Uchiha compound, including a king-sized bed, with his two unfairly sexy teammates by winter, he was sure of it! They could snuggle up around the kotatsu with piping hot bowls of ramen, and it would be-

"...ramen?", Naruto was startled from his daydream by the tail end of a question from Sakura. For one dazed moment he thought that she had read his mind, but the growing impatience indicated by her tapping foot sparked his sense of self-preservation. He had no idea what she had just asked, but she obviously expected an answer.

"Wha-huh?", He inarticulated. Sakura rolled her eyes and repeated the question.

"I _said_, how about I take you boys out for ramen. I guess the answer's 'no'.", She teased.

"No! I a mean yes! Yes I want to go! I was just, uh, lost in thought there for a minute. And Sasuke wants to go too, don't you Sasuke!", He nattered. Sasuke looked both smug and disgusted in his general direction, as if he knew _exactly_ what his teammate had been 'lost in thought' about. Naruto had a terrible suspicion that he was blushing by now.

He was completely _certain_ that he blushed when Sakura latched with enviable nonchalance onto first his arm, then Sasuke's, and dragged them in the direction of Ichiraku Ramen.

"Are you feeling all right Naruto? I know my own strength, and I didn't hit you _that_ hard, even if you _are_ looking dopey and concussed."

"Hey, what part of my expression is dopey?!", He demanded. That was her future Hokage that she was sassing!

"What part isn't?", asked Sasuke, peering up into the sky philosophically, as if waiting for the gods to answer him.

"Heeey you guys, don't be so mean. I'll start to think that you don't love me any more.", He whined. It took a second for his brain to catch up with his mouth, and he blanched as he realized how needy and desperate he sounded. That wasn't how he had planned to do things at all! Where had that confidence that he had felt just minutes ago gone to? He shuffled his feet a little bit in embarrassment, and blushed all the harder as the three of them lurched to a stop in the middle of the street.

In the cringing silence that followed, he stared down at his sandals, wriggling his toes as he waited for one of them to protest the fact that they had ever loved him _at all_. Actually, toes were pretty fascinating. They were like misshapen fingers, or something. It would be cool if he could grab stuff with them. He could be, like, a monkey-warrior-ninja, and throw kunai with his feet. He wriggled his right big toe experimentally at a blade of grass to see if he could grab it, with no success. Bummer. Cold sweat ran down his jaw line as he anticipated that any moment, and _second_, the excruciating rejection would-

Sakura untangled the arm not wrapped around Naruto's from Sasuke long enough to pull Naruto into a quick hug, and pecked him on the cheek with equal speed, right over one of his whisker scars. That certainly didn't feel like rejection. A swipe of wetness on his other cheek drew his attention to the fact that Sasuke had shunshin'ed over to his other side, and...

"Argh! You licked me!", It wasn't the most suave thing that he could have said, but Sasuke at least had the grace to look embarrassed in response. Especially when Naruto yelled loud enough for an entire village block to hear.

"Hn.", Now the bastard was trying to look all aloof about it, which he knew from experience was hard to do with Sakura giggling at you with such enthusiasm. Although, he'd never had the pleasure of her doing so right next to his _ear_, with little puffs of her breath dancing over the sensitive skin of his neck. It was something that would bear repeating. And speaking of things that bore repeating-

"It was kind of hot, actually. You should do it again. But maybe other places...", Naruto trailed off with a leer. Sasuke actually turned _red_ at that, almost the same shade as the tomatoes that he so enjoyed. Less pleasant than the blush was the hard elbow to Naruto's ribs that followed.

A moment of pain was worth it, though. Now with a teammate on either side, Naruto set off to Ichiraku's with a beatific smile and a bounce in his step.

Life was _awesome_.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Four weeks in, and Kankurou still hadn't discovered a way to make his siblings stop acting like idiots. Even some of the chuunin around the administrative building had a jittery look to them that signaled their knowledge that _something_ was wrong, even if they didn't know the precise nature of the problem. That was _bad_. When the Kazekage and his sister were noticeably upset, it was a headache for the entire village.

Gaara had also been avoiding foreign dignitaries, wary of them seeing through his henge. The Hidden Village of Sand didn't get many visitors, so it was not immediately obvious, but people _were_ finally beginning to notice. There were rumors circulating that the Kazekage was ill. That the Kazekage had been abducted, and that one of the higher-ups was standing in his place until the real Kazekage could be recovered. That the Kazekage was having trouble controlling his demon. The list of wild speculations went on and on. Gaara needed to address his people quickly, if not with the truth, then at least with some official-sounding lie that would set the village at ease. With the disquieting rumble of political change being called for in the west, now was a bad time for Sunagakure to be so weak with anxiety.

To that end, Kankurou had staged a devious plan to reunite his family, and address his concerns about village politics in one fell swoop. He had invited his siblings over for dinner.

It hadn't been an easy mission. Although self-imposed, he would list it as A-rank, at least. He'd had to pull out all the stops, right down to his puppy-dog-eyes no jutsu, to get both of them to agree. Not to mention the lamentable fact that he had to pay for dinner to be delivered out of his own pocket, since his skills in the kitchen were limited mostly to fried eggs and instant ramen. And Temari wasn't feeling kindly disposed toward ramen these days. Still, they were due at his front door any minute, and assuming that they both showed, it would be more than worth it. At least he didn't have to clean the place, thanks to Temari's new OCD streak.

Gaara was the first to arrive, the henge that made her appear male dissipating as soon as the door closed behind her. Kankurou was a bit surprised. Temari usually liked to show up early to this sort of thing, to make sure that everything was in order beforehand (like he could screw up placing an order for delivery). Kankurou got his little sister a glass of water, and badgered her as much as he felt safely able to for the details of her latest visit with Elder Azami that morning. He interpreted the responding flat stares to mean, 'Yes, still pregnant', and 'No, I'm not going to talk about it'. Not that he really needed confirmation of the 'still pregnant' bit. The fact that his brother was still a girl was a good indicator. He _did_ manage to pry from her reluctant lips the fact that Azami had forbid her to make any more attempts at reversing the transformation by herself, as it just caused her unnecessary pain and stress. She would have weekly appointments with the elder from now on to monitor her health and the progression of her pregnancy. From the strength of the fetus's chakra, Azami thought it unlikely that she would miscarry, and had sent Gaara off with a stack of books on pregnancy and child-rearing with the clear understanding that the Kazekage would read them _or else_. Gaara's petulant expression told Kankurou that she had badly wanted to ask, 'Or else _what?_", but had admirably restrained herself from throwing her weight as kage around.

"So, have you started reading them yet?", Asked Kankurou, fairly sure of the answer.

"No, of course not. It's too early, and I have more important things to do", Gaara growled. That tone of voice sounded so much more _cute_ now that she was a girl. Ugh. Suddenly having two sisters was doing weird things to his brain, if he had just thought of any part of Gaara as _cute_.

"Ah", Kankurou nodded sagely. "I understand. Lots of papers to sign", he added. His sister stabbed him with a look that informed him on no uncertain terms that she knew she was being mocked, and that such insolence wasn't good for his continued well-being. In the past, that would have sent cold shivers down his spine, but these days he would happily take a death glare over the blank automaton act that she'd been displaying lately. It was a sad state of affairs when a spark of killing intent from Gaara was a _relief_.

Before their banter could either progress further, or disperse into awkward silence, a knock at the door informed him that Temari had arrived. She didn't wait for him to answer it, but let herself in with the confident air of someone who had been spending far too much time at her brother's apartment. She'd reorganized the place so furiously that she probably knew where more of his stuff was located than _he_ did. Her lips were set in a smile that was only comforting until he saw the forced nature of it.

Still, as she reorganized his already immaculate table, Kankurou was just glad that she had come. Problems always seemed less overwhelming with his big sister at his side. Not that Gaara wasn't a capable problem-solver in his own right, but Temari was easier to talk to. Well, she had been, at least. Listening to her dull attempt at small talk as she shifted all of the flatware to match at each place setting, Kankurou was no longer sure. She was really a wreck

The three of them sat around the table for a few minutes, fiddling with the silverware, and looking at one another while trying to _look_ like they weren't looking at one another. Which was confusing enough to _think_, much less to actually do.

As by the hand of some benevolent god, the doorbell rang to signal the arrival of the delivery boy, before Temari could fuss too much, or they could all go cross-eyed from their looking/not-looking at each other. It was curry again, mostly ordered because it usually survived the delivery trip better than other foodstuffs did. The flatbread was still piping hot in its foil container, so Kankurou tipped the boy extra. That kind of fast service was something to be encouraged, after all. He wondered if the kid were a Genin at the academy, which would explain his speed. Genin weren't technically supposed to work, as it was considered a distraction from their studies, but most family-run businesses in Suna couldn't afford to hire outside help, so they weren't judged harshly for assigning their children some light work outside of academy hours. The children were usually happy with the extra pocket money as well, a fact displayed admirably by the boy's gap-toothed grin, and his enthusiastic wave as Kankurou shut the door after him.

Steam rose from the containers as Kankurou removed the lids, and encouraged his siblings to sit and eat. Temari and Gaara both seemed relieved to have something to focus on rather than each other, and set to their food with a grim determination that made Kankurou wince. Though despite the reason for it, he was still overjoyed to see Gaara eating so well. The morning sickness hadn't even started yet, and she was already looking haggard. Kankurou was reasonably sure that pregnant women weren't actually supposed to _lose_ weight. The unhappy thought that maybe it was Gaara's intention to starve her pregnancy away occurred to him. If Gaara would actually _read_ any of the books that Elder Azami had given her, she would know that it didn't work like that, and that doing so would just serve to make herself dangerously ill.

Of course, the weight loss could be completely innocent. The unnerving stare that Temari had once again leveled at Gaara was enough to put Kankurou off of _his_ food, and he wasn't even the recipient of it.

"Gaara...", Kankurou started a bit at the sound of his older sister _finally_ addressing their younger sibling. He felt light-headed with relief. If Temari was talking to Gaara now, then surely they could work out their issues and be a proper family again. This situation was too much like a flashback to his genin days, and he wanted it done and over with.

"Gaara, I know that I haven't... That I haven't been a good sister to you lately. That I've been distant. And I'm sorry for that. I've just been so _scared_ for you. Can we just start over?", she asked. Gaara scrutinized her, gaze intense but unreadable, and finally gave a tight nod. Temari replied with an equally tight smile, and everyone went back to eating dinner as if they'd never been interrupted.

It was so strange. There was the reconciliation that Kankurou had been waiting for, but it didn't feel like anything had changed. Temari was acting so unlike herself that Kankurou actually formed the seals for an inconspicuous _kai_ below the table. As no stranger appeared in her place, he could only assume that it really _was_ her, and that she was just nervous. Still, that explanation didn't fit either. Kankurou had accompanied his sister on any number of high risk A-rank, and a few S-rank missions, and he had never seen her act like this before. Was this just different because it was personal?

Gaara was the first to finish her meal, and unceremoniously shuffled over to the sink to deposit her dishes. Kankurou was relieved that she didn't wash them as well. One sister in a cleaning frenzy was more than enough. He also made note, with a small measure of resentment, of the fact that she hadn't figured out how to walk like a girl yet. His life would be less complicated if Gaara either kept up the henge in private, or acted properly girly. As it was, Kankurou had a perpetual headache from the confusion of it all. He didn't know wether to think of her as a brother or a sister, and took his cues from her appearance. When she looked like a girl but didn't _act_ like one, it made the issue of pronouns that much more convoluted.

Kankurou and Temari finished their food at about the same time, and Temari _did_ insist on doing the dishes. Meanwhile, Kankurou tried his best to steer the conversation toward important issues, while his siblings foiled his master plan with uneasy pauses and inane small talk.

"Gaara, I was wondering when you were planning to make an official proclamation. There's a lot of bullshit going around right now, and I think it would be good to give the villagers some firm explanation to hold on to.", Kankurou suggested.

"There are always rumors about me. It comes with being a Jinchuuriki. The public can mind their own business. Which curry place did you order from? It was good, but the rice was a bit salty."

"Ah, the one three blocks down. Should I try the one across town next time?", he asked with a sense of resignation. Gaara wasn't talking. Well, that still left Temari.

"Temari, how was the appointment with Elder Azami this morning? I could barely get Gaara to talk about it. You'll use your big sisterly powers for the side of light, and make sure that she actually _reads_ those books, won't you?", He tried gamely.

"It was... fine. I bought some tea from one of those nomad merchants today. His camel was the most cantankerous bastard I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. I'll put some water on to boil, and we'll see if it's a blend good enough to be worth getting spit on by a dromedary with a grudge against mankind.", Temari said, her attempt at levity falling flat.

"Mm", was Gaara's barely vocalized agreement. Kankurou was outnumbered and outgunned.

"Yeah, OK.", he said with a helpless shrug. Maybe the tea would help them all to relax, and _then_ they could tackle some serious issues. They would talk, and Temari would get back to her usual bossy self and take charge, which would be a huge weight off of his shoulders, because puppets were one thing, but he really hated to be in charge of _people_. And Gaara would get annoyed by Temari's meddling, and glare, and make unsubtle threats, and everything would be back to fucking _normal_.

_And while I'm wishing for all of that, I may as well wish for Suna to be a hot springs resort, and for Shukaku to be an advocate for world peace_, He thought bitterly.

He watched his sister glide through the mundanities of making tea with the practiced motions that came of having done something countless times before. A quick glance to the side revealed that Gaara had a keen eye on her as well. Temari didn't seem to notice, focused as she was on the daily ritual of pouring and boiling water. Once the kettle was on, she did not rejoin her siblings, but instead leaned against the counter to wait for the first wisps of steam to rise up from the spout.

"It's an herbal blend from the west", she explained. "It's supposed to taste best if you take the water off before it reaches a rolling boil."

Kankurou nodded with polite interest, and murmured a response that he forgot even as the words left his mouth. His attention was fixed on his sister's left index finger, which was tapping an inaudible rhythm against the granite counter top. Kankurou frowned as he watched that same hand rise to fidget with one of it's owner's ponytails in a nervous tell. Temari wasn't one for restless movement under most circumstances, and the boredom that came with watching a kettle of water boil was not an exception to that rule. What the hell was going on with her?

The kitchen was soon filled with the soft whisper of simmering water, and Temari poured the hot liquid with neat efficiency into Kankurou's plain earthenware teapot. The scent of steeping herbs reached his nose, pungent but not unpleasant, smelling slightly of anise. Temari watched the clock to keep track of the steeping time, and poured the aromatic fluid through a small strainer into each of their cups after exactly five minutes. It was green, with a murky translucence that was at once repellant and intriguing. Kankurou hoped that she hadn't been tricked into buying some dried up roadside weeds that a dozen camel-trains had pissed on. The smell of it was promising, at least.

"Oww.", An impulsive gulp reminded him why drinking hot tea with such gusto was a bad idea.

"Drink it slowly, idiot, or you'll burn your lips off and really have a reason to cover yourself in 'war paint'", Temari snapped shrilly. Kankurou gave her an odd look for that overreaction as she demonstrated how tea was intended to be drunk, and took a small sip from her own cup. Gaara watched her siblings squabble for a moment with detached interest, then picked up her cup and raised it to her lips.

It happened so quickly that all Kankurou saw was an angry flash of ruddy sand, thrumming like a thousand enraged wasps, before the particles settled to reveal Gaara sitting, eyes startled wide, in a ruin of smashed pottery and puddles of vivid green tea. On closer inspection, the mess had ended up entirely on the table and floor, with none of it touching Gaara herself. _Sand barrier_, was Kankurou's sluggish, hysteria-tinged thought. Temari had also born the brunt of some of the shrapnel. Her shirt was dotted with splodges of the liquid, and there was a small cut on her cheek from a stray fragment of teacup. More worrisome than that small wound were the tremors that wracked her body, and the chalky tone of her complexion. And gods, oh gods, she looked like she was going to_ cry_.

"Temari", Gaara said, voice lost and small. "Temari, _what have you done?_"

"I- you _can't_ do this. It's impossible, and ridiculous, and you _can't_ have a baby. Don't you know how _dangerous _it is? You only know Mother from pictures, but I _remember_ her being pregnant with you, before they took her away for her confinement. And _Gaara_, you look _so much_ like her, right down to that wasting despair in your eyes when you think no one's looking. This will _ruin_ you, just like it did her...And I just wanted... I just want...", here Temari broke down, heaving great lungfulls of air and releasing them in shuddering sobs. Kankurou winced at his sister's choice of words as Gaara seemed to curl in on herself at the mention of their mother's final pregnancy 'ruining' her. The sand was curved up over the back of Gaara's chair in a protective, spiny mass, like half of a thorny husk of some exotic fruit.

"What, _exactly_, was in the tea?", Kankurou asked once it became clear that Gaara wasn't going to. Temari lifted her head from her hands enough for him to see her bloodshot gaze

"It really was an herb from the west, though not one you would want to make tea from. It... causes severe muscle spasms.", she clarified, and punctuated the last sentence with an unattractive sniff.

"Was it in the pot, or just Gaara's cup?", Kanurou growled.

"The pot. Which means that you got the worst of it. Uh. Sorry Kankurou.", She said. Kankurou just stared at her. "It's not fatal or anything.", she added helpfully.

"You were trying to make me miscarry.", Gaara said. She didn't look very angry at Temari's attempt to poison all of them. In fact, she was looking at her sister's unharmed teacup in open speculation. Kankurou watched as she reached for it. She couldn't really mean to...

Kankurou felt a small noise of distress bubble up from his chest as Gaara slid Temari's cup to her own place-setting. He had killed people in cold blood for pay, but he found that when faced with _this_, he felt sick. He had to stop her, had to do _something_. Any second now, he would reach out and-

Gaara lifted the cup from the table, and the sand acted before Kankurou could. This time it reduced every cup and plate in sight to potsherds. Gaara contemplated the handle that was left in her grasp, the rest of the vessel smashed to pieces. With incongruous care, she set it gently on the placemat in front of her.

"I was right, it won't work. It's the same reason that I can't reverse the transformation spell. The sentience in the sand recognizes the... third source of chakra... as mine, and won't allow harm to come to it. I had hoped that if I willed it hard enough, I could overcome it, but it's no use. I can't control it any more than I ever could.", Came the bitter explanation. Gaara looked angry now, but only at herself. Angry and disappointed.

Kankurou looked at the wreckage of his kitchen and his family, and wondered what the hell he could do to fix it.

**End Notes:** This chapter took me four months to finish, even though I'm sure the number of hours I spent writing was probably the same as for the first two. I hope to not have that happen again, but I confess that I am not very reliable when it comes to this sort of thing. I'll try!

Writing from Kankurou's PoV was unexpectedly hard. The other two sandsibs are easier for me to understand, for some reason. It will be a relief to write from Gaara and/or Temari's PoV next chapter. If I'm feeling brave, I may even throw in some Sasuke (although I don't think I'll be feeling that brave, honestly).

If Sasuke's return seemed a bit glossed over, that's because it _was_. I figure that there are enough wonderful stories out there entirely on that very subject that I needn't dwell on it in this particular story. A few more details will likely be revealed in the next Sasuke-centric chapter, but since he's stolen the show in the manga well enough for a while, I don't feel compelled to indulge him in my own fan-scribble as well.

This story isn't supposed to be any sort of pro-life or pro-choice commentary, so please don't make it about that.

With the third chapter of this story complete, I am now one fourth of the way through my initial outline. However, that outline was written up with the expectation that chapters would be approximately 5,000 words apiece, not 10,000, which is what they've turned out to be. Because of that, some of my outline has not enough stuff happening per chapter. I think 12 chapters still sounds like a nice number, so I'm working on combining the content of some of the earlier chapters, and expanding the later ones with more plot (Horrors! Plot in my smut story!?). We'll see how it goes. I may end up with only 10 chapters, but I doubt very much that there will be more than 12. I have other stories that I want to work on, including ones starring my own characters.

Thank you to the lovely people who have read this story, and to those who have reviewed. I really do love reading what you have to say about my work. To the lurkers out there; I appreciate you too! I look at the stats for my stories on ff(dot)net on a regular basis. To date, more than one third of the people who have clicked on the first chapter of my quirky little story have continued on to the second chapter. I consider that a great success! I know that the warnings at the top of chapter one alone are enough to scare most people off, and that this story is something that not everyone will enjoy reading. I'm glad that some of you _are_ enjoying it. I know that I am!

As usual, this chapter was entirely self-edited. Please feel free to point out any errors or inconsistencies to me via review on ff(dot)net, e-mail, or a reply on my LiveJournal. I am happy to accept full-contact critique, or anything else that you would like to say about my work.


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